The Northern Iron

by George A. Birmingham

“The woman’s right, Neal.” He showed no signs of hurry in his speech. “I’m thinking it will be safer for us to be out of this. Here, mistress, what’s the reckoning?”

“Not a penny, not a penny, will I take. Are them murdering devils to drink without paying and me taking money from the son of Micah Ward or any friend of his? But for God’s sake get you gone. I’ll keep them dandering about the door for a while, and do you get your horses and out by the back way into the field. You can strike the road again lower down.”

It was late in the evening when Donald and Neal, with weary horses and wearier limbs, came close to Antrim. Neal was unused to riding long distances, and Donald complained that a voyage across the Atlantic left a man unfit for land travelling. They accosted a stranger on the road and asked his guidance to the best inn. The man answered them in a civil way. He spoke with a northern accent, but his voice was singularly sweet and gentle, and his words were those of a cultured man.

“I am on my way to the Massereene Arms,” he said. “I think you will find the accommodation good both for yourselves and your horses.”

He walked with them, chatting about the weather and the condition of the roads. He said that he himself had that day walked from Ballymena, and intended to spend the night in Antrim. He asked no questions and seemed in no way concerned with the affairs of his chance acquaintances.

Donald and Neal took their horses to the inn yard and saw them rubbed down, stabled, and fed. Then they entered the public room of the inn, sat down, and ordered their supper. The man who had guided them to the door sat at a corner of the table eating a frugal meal of bread and cheese. Beside his tumbler stood a large jug of buttermilk. In a few minutes he rose from the table and took his seat on a bench near the fire, where the light from a lamp, which hung on the wall, fell on him. He drew a notebook from his pocket, and proceeded to write in it, referring from time to time to scraps of paper, of which he seemed to have a large number. He was a man of middle height, of a spare frame, which showed no sign of great personal strength, but was well knit, and might easily have been capable of great endurance. His face was thin and narrow. He had very dark hair, and dark, gentle eyes. There was a suggestion about the mouth of the kind of strength which often goes with gentleness.

To Neal the appearance of the man was not very interesting. He watched him in mere idleness while waiting for the girl to bring the supper Donald had ordered. If there had been anyone else in the room Neal would not have wasted a second glance on the unobtrusive stranger. Yet, as he watched the man he became aware of something about him which was attractive. There was a dignity in his movements quite different from Donald Ward’s habitual self-assertion, different, too, from the stately confidence of Lord Dunseveric. There was a quiet seriousness in the way he set to work at his writing, and a methodical carefulness in his sorting of the scraps of paper which he drew one by one from his pocket. The maid entered with the wine and food which Donald had ordered.

“You’ll be for beds, the night,” she said.

“Ay,” said Donald, “and do you see that the feathers are well shaken and the beds soft. If you’d ridden all the miles I’ve ridden to-day, my girl, after not being on the back of a horse for three months, you’d want a soft bed to lie on.”

The stranger looked up from his notebook. There was laughter in his dark eyes, but it went no further than his eyes. His lips showed no inclination to smile.