The O’Mahony of Muirisc looked over the excited group which surrounded him, dimly recognizing the strangeness of the weirdly interwoven qualities which run in the blood of Heber—the soft tenderness of nature which through tears would swear loyalty unto death to a little child, shifting on the instant to the ferocity of the wolf-hound burying its jowl in the throat of its quarry. Beyond them were gathering the sea mists, as by enchantment they had gathered ages before with vain intent to baffle the sons of Milesius, and faintly in the halflight lowered the beetling cliffs whereon The O’Mahonys, true sons of those sea-rovers, had crouched watching for their prey this thousand of years. He could almost feel the ancestral taste of blood in his mouth as he looked, and thought upon his answer.
“No, don’t worry about his gitting off,” he said, at last. “I ’ll take care of that. You’ll never see him again—no one on top of this earth ’ll ever lay eyes on him again.”
With visible reluctance the men forced themselves to accept this compromise. The Hen Hawk plunged doggedly along up the bay.
Three hours later, The O’Mahony and Jerry, not without much stumbling and difficulty, reached the strange subterranean chamber where they had found the mummy of the monk. They bore between them the inert body of a man, whose head was enveloped in bandages, and whose hands, hanging limp at arm’s length, were discolored with the grime and mold from the stony path over which they had dragged. They threw this burden on the mediaeval bed, and, drawing long breaths of relief, turned to light some candles in addition to the lantern Jerry had borne, and to kindle a fire on the hearth.
They talked in low murmurs meanwhile. The O’Mahony had told Jerry something of what part Linsky had played in his life. Jerry, without being informed with more than the general outlines of the story, was able swiftly to comprehend his master’s attitude toward the man—an attitude compounded of hatred for his treachery of to-day and gratitude of the services which he had unconsciously performed in the past. He understood to a nicety, too, what possibilities there were in the plan which The O’Mahony now unfolded to him, as the fire began crackling up the chimney.
“I can answer for his gittin’ over that crack in the head,” said The O’Mahony, heating and stirring a tin cup full of balsam over the flame. “Once I’ve fixed this bandage on, we can bring him to with ammonia and whisky, an’ give him some broth. He’ll live all right—an’ he’ll live right here, d’ye mind. Whatever else happens, he’s never to git outside, an’ he’s never to know where he is. Nobody but you is to so much as dream of his bein’ down here—be as mum as an oyster about it, won’t you? You’re to have sole charge of him, d’ye see—the only human being he ever lays eyes on.”
“Egor! I’ll improve his moind wid grand discourses on trayson and informin’ an’ betrayin’ his oath, and the like o’ that, till he’ll be fit to die wid shame.”
“No—I dunno—p’r’aps it’d be better not to let him know we know—jest make him think we’re his friends, hidin’ him away from the police. However, that can take care of itself. Say whatever you like to him, only—”
“Only don’t lay a hand on him—is it that ye were thinkin’?” broke in Jerry.