“God save all here!” he called out upon the threshold, in the half-jesting, half-sincere tone of one who, using an ancient formula at the outset by way of irony, grows to feel that he means what it says.
“God save you kindly!” was the prompt response, in a thin, strangely vibrant voice: and on the instant the speaker came forward into firelight.
He was a slender man of middle age, with a pale, spectacled face, framed by a veritable mane of dingy reddish hair thrown back from temples and brow. This brow, thus bared, was broad and thoughtful besides being wonderfully white, and, with the calm gray eyes, which shone steadily through the glasses, seemed to constitute practically the whole face. There were, one noted at a second glance, other portions of this face—a weak, pointed nose, for example, and a mouth and chin hidden under irregular outlines of straggling beard; but the brow and the eyes were what the gaze returned to. The man wore a loose, nondescript sort of gown, gathered at the waist with a cord. Save for a table against the wall, littered with papers and writing materials and lighted by a lamp in a bracket above, the chamber differed in little from its appearance on that memorable night when the dead monk’s sleep of centuries had been so rudely broken in upon.
“I’m glad ye’ve come down ag’in to-day,” said the man of the brow and eyes. “Since this mornin’, I’ve traced out the idintity of Finghin—the one wid the brain-ball I told ye of—as clear as daylight. Not a man-jack of ’em but ’ll see it now like the nose on their face.”
“Ah, thin, that’s a mercy,” said Jerry, seating himself tentatively on a corner of the table. “Egor! It looked at one toime there as if his identity was gone to the divil intoirely. But l’ave you to smoke him out!”
“It can be proved that this Finghin is wan an’ the same wid the so-called Fiachan Roe, who married the widow of the O’Dubhagain, in the elevinth cintury.”
“Ah, there ye have it!” said Jerry, shaking his head dejectedly. “He wud marry a widdeh, w’u’d he? Thin, be me sowl, ’tis a marvel to grace he had anny idint—whatever ye call it—left at all. Well, sir, to tell ye the truth, ’tis disappointed I am in Finghin. I credited him with more sinse than to be marryin’ widdehs. An’ I suppose ye’ll l’ave him out of your book altogether now. Egor, an’ serve him right, too!”
The other smiled; a wan and fleeting smile of the eyes and brow.
“Ah, don’t be talkin!” he said, pleasantly, and then added, with a sigh: “More like he’ll l’ave me, wid me work undone. You’ll bear me witness, sir, that I’ve been patient, an’ thried me best to live continted here in this cave of the earth, an’ busy me mind wid work; but no man can master his drames. ’Tis that that’s killin’ me. Every night, the moment I’m asleep, faith, I’m out in the meadehs, wid flowers on the ditches an’ birds singin’, an’ me fishin’ in the brook, like I was a boy ag’in; an’ whin I wake up, me heart’s broke intirely! I tell ye, man, if ’t wasn’t for me book here, I’d go outside in spite of ’em all, an’ let ’em hang me, if they like—jist for wan luk at the sky an’ wan breath of fresh air.”
Jerry swung his legs nonchalantly, but there was a new speculation twinkling in his eyes as he regarded his companion.