“One of my gentlemen shall go with her,” said Shehan. “There are things among the rushes sometimes, Sullivan, that fill a house as well as thatch it.”
Dora invited any of the gentlemen to help her, and led the way to a rush bank, in an opposite direction; but, declining to follow her lead, they entered the house, and laughed, when they found it completely empty.
“You’re grown mightily afraid of the sky, Sullivan,” observed Shehan, “since you’d be after mending your thatch, sooner than getting a bed to lie on, to say nothing of a bit and sup, which I don’t see you have to be boasting of.”
All Sullivan’s good reasons why he should suddenly mend his thatch with rushes that lay “convaynient” went for nothing with the proctor, who had caught a glimpse of the stratagem. The claim for tithes, arrears, and fees was urged, certain ominous-looking papers produced, and no money being forthcoming, the goods were found and carried off, even down to Dora’s wheel, with the flax upon it. The proctor gave no heed to the despair of the destitute tenants, but rather congratulated himself on having heard of the former seizures in time to appropriate what remained.
Of those whom he had left behind, the father lay down once more in the doorway, declaring himself nigh hand brokenhearted, and melancholy entirely; his wife went about to interest the neighbours in their wrongs; and Dora kneeled at her prayers in the darkest corner of the cabin. After a time, when the twilight began to thicken, her father started up in great agitation, and dared somebody outside to come in and see what he could find for rent, or tithes, or tolls, or tax of any kind. His creditors might come swarming as thick as boys going to a fair, but they would find nothing, thanks to the proctor: unless they carried him off bodily, they might go as they came, and he would try whose head was the hardest before it came to that. Dora perceived that her father was in too great a passion to listen to one who seemed not to be a creditor; and she went to the door to interpose. More quick-sighted than her father, she instantly saw, through the dim light, that it was Dan; and not even waiting for the assurance of his voice, threw herself on his neck, while he almost stifled her with caresses.
“Dan, are you come back true? Just speak that word.”
“True as the saints to the blessed, darling of my heart.”
“Then God is merciful to send you now, for we want true friends to raise us up, stricken as we are to the bare ground.”
“Bare ground, indeed,” cried Dan, entering and looking for a resting-place, on which to deposit the sobbing and clinging Dora. “They have used you basely, my heart’s life, but trust to me to make it up in your own way to each of you. You trust me, Dora, don’t you, as the priest gave leave?”
Dora silently intimated her trust in her lover’s faith, which it had never entered her head to doubt—love having thus far been entirely unconnected in her mind with thoughts of the world’s gear. She wept on his shoulder, leaving it to her father to tell the story of their troubles, and only looked up when she heard her mother’s voice approaching, to ask, with great simplicity, what they were to do next?