“That I did not!” said Murphy, conclusively.
“Ah, ye’ve no ears, man! I was that flurried at the time, I couldn’t think what it was—but now, whin it comes back to me, it was like talking to The O’Mahony himself. There was that one word, ‘onistinjun,’ that The O’Mahony had forever on his tongue. Surely you noticed that!”
“All Americans say that same,” Murphy explained carelessly. “’T is well known most of ’em are discinded from the Injuns. ’Tis that they m’ane.” It did not occur to Kate to question this bold ethno-philological proposition. She leant back in her seat at the stern, absent-mindedly toying with the ribbons of her hat, and watching the sky over Murphy’s head.
“Poor, dear old O’Mahony!” she sighed at last.
“Amin to that miss!” murmured the boatman, between strokes.
“’T is a year an’ more now, Murphy, since we had the laste sign in the world from him. Ah, wirra! I’m beginnin’ to be afraid dead ’tis he is!”
“Keep your heart, miss; keep your heart!” crooned the old boatman, in what had been for months a familiar phrase on his lips. “Sure no mortial man ever stepped fut on green sod that ’ud take more killin’ than our O’Mahony. Why, coleen asthore, wasn’t he foightin’ wid the French, against the Prooshians, an’ thin wid the Turkeys against the Rooshians, an’ bechune males, as ye’d say, didn’t he bear arms in Spain for the Catholic king, like the thunderin’ rare old O’Mahony that he is, an’ did ever so much as a scratch come to him—an’ him killin’ an’ destroyin’ thim by hundreds? Ah, rest aisy about him, Miss Katie!”
The two had long since exhausted, in their almost daily talks, every possible phase of this melancholy subject. It was now April of 1879, and the last word received from the absent chief had been a hastily scrawled note dispatched from Adrianople, on New Year’s Day of 1878—when the Turkish army, beaten finally at Plevna and decimated in the Schipka, were doggedly moving backward toward the Bosphorus. Since that, there had been absolute silence—and Kate and Murphy had alike, hoping against hope, come long since to fear the worst. Though each strove to sustain confidence in the other, there was no secret between their hearts as to what both felt.
“Murphy,” said Kate, rousing herself all at once from her reverie, “there’s something I’ve been keeping from you—and I can’t hold it anny longer. Do ye mind when Malachy wint away last winter?”
“Faith I do,” replied the boatman. (Malachy, be it explained, had followed The O’Mahony in all his wanderings up to the autumn of 1870, when, in a skirmish shortly after Sedan, he had lost an arm and, upon his release from the hospital, had been sent back to Muirisc.) “I mind that he wint to Amerriky.”