And I too heard the low, sweet music of my lady's voice, trolling a ditty in a chamber not far away. And there broke into it the loud, rough utterance of a man, speaking words in the Irish tongue, and the song ceased.
"What rude unmannerly lubber——" I was beginning, but Toby checked me.
"Tush! a father stands on no ceremony with his child," he said.
"Her father!" said I.
"Ay, her father, Kedagh O'Hagan, the arrantest rebel and the jolliest old swasher that ever 'scaped hanging. Hark while I tell you. We were in full cry after the O'Neill when a tatterdemalion kerne came hot-foot after us, bearing a letter very fairly writ but somewhat indictable in the article of spelling, addressed to our general; the which perusing, he read a very painful threat to hang you up if O'Hagan should suffer so much as the clipping of a hair. He twitched his brows—you know his way—and said that having fallen into the hands of some apparent termagant or vixenish shrew you must e'en abide his leisure, swearing roundly that Christopher Rudd's head was nought in comparison with the rascal O'Neill.
"Well, it chanced some days after that we snared this Kedagh O'Hagan in our toils, and our general, who loves you heartily, gave him into my hands and bade him bring me to his lair, charging me to hang him in his own courtyard if you had been diminished by the paring of a nail. Last night, as we rode over yond hills, we saw a great way off two red fires descend as from the sky, and kindle their image in a space of water beneath. The sight put O'Hagan into a fret and fume, he declaring the lights portended some menace to his castle. We made all the speed we could, but what with the rough pathless hills and the villainous reechy fens, we had to go so far about that 'twas morning ere we came to the place. And as we issued forth of the wood yonder we saw the roof filled with women, of whom one at sight of us waved a handkercher as if to say 'Haste! haste!' Coming to the water's edge, and finding no craft to ferry us across, we swam our horses, and some of us mounted the wall by ladders we saw hooked there for our conveniency, and so fell upon the pack of howling Irishmen in the courtyard and about the door. And when we had done our work, and the old man rushed panting up the stairs, raging for his daughter, he found her here with your head in her lap, dropping salt tears of happiness."
I pressed his hand and thanked him for the service he had done me.
"Well, lad, well, 'tis nought," said he. "Come now, your tale. I must hear about this pickle you fell into, and all the process of your adventures."
I told him how I had been embogged, and brought hither to the castle, and how I had borne my part in defending it against the desperadoes; but I said no whit of my escape by diving, nor of my return. When I came to the end of my brief relation, Toby regarded me very whimsically.
"So, so, my Chris," he said, "you deem your old friend Toby to be unworthy of your confidence. Why, man, I knew all that, and a great deal more; for I took the pains, when the damsel had related all to her father in a torrent of Irishry—the which methinks hath its melodies—I took the pains, I say, to persuade her to rehearse the same in English, which she did with a pretty smack of her tongue that pleased me mightily. She showed me the window whence you made your monstrous dive, waxed eloquent upon your chivalry in coming back to defend her, called you her noble captain, and, in short, so worked upon my inflammable heart that it pricked and stung with jealousy, and I wished I had been in your room."