'You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Black Shawn,' she cried, with her eyes flashing, 'to keep persecuting a girl that's as good as wife to another man. Why, if he was never in the world, do you think I'd take one like you, that's plotting and planning to take our bit of land before the ashes of our roof-tree are gone gray? If he was here he'd know how to avenge us, and not till he had done it would he look the girl he loved in the face.'
She was holding forth like this, her words tripping each other up in her anger; but sure, the poor little girl didn't mean what she was saying about revenge; it was likely some hot words she'd picked up out of the newspapers that came into her head in her passion, and tripped off her tongue without her knowing a word of what they meant.
But Black Shawn heard her, turning first the deep red with which one of his complexion blushes, and then falling off as gray as the dead. Before she'd half said her say he took up his caubeen, put it on his head, and walked out of the place with an air as if he were dreaming.
Now he had an old carbine to frighten the crows, a crazy old thing that was as likely to hurt the man who fired it as the thing that was fired at. Black Shawn sat up all night cleaning it, and the grim mouth of the man never relaxed, nor did the colour come back to his ashy cheeks.
The next night he lay in wait for Mr. Ramsay-Stewart as he came home from the county club-house in Ballinscreen, and shot at him, killing poor Larry Byrne. It was only the length of the bridge from the police barracks, and as it was but nine o'clock at night, Ballinscreen people were up and about. So there wasn't much time for Black Shawn to see what mischief the blunderbuss had done. He saw at the first glance that one man was down in the dogcart, and another man swinging on by his arms to the mouth of the terrified horse. But already people were running across the bridge and shouting, and the dark quay seemed alive with lights.
Luckily for Shawn the road away from the town was black as a tunnel. It runs between the two stone walls that shut out Lord Cahirmore's deer and black cattle from the public gaze. Down this black tunnel raced Shawn, sobbing like a child, for the black fit was gone over and the full horror of his crime was upon him. He was a quick runner, and he got the advantage, for the police in their flurry stopped for a minute or two debating whether to take the river banks or the road. But in Shawn's head the pursuing footsteps beat, beat, while he was yet far beyond them, and the trumpets of the Day of Judgment rang in his miserable ears. He had the smoking gun in his hands, for he hadn't the wit to get rid of it. And yet the man was safe, if he had had his wits about him, for he was the last man for Mr. Ramsay-Stewart to suspect or allow suspicion to fall upon.
Well, he raced on blindly, and all of a sudden, as he turned a corner, a man flung up his arms in front of him, and then caught him by both wrists. It was Murty Meehan, and more betoken, he was on his way to a drilling of the Fenian boys in a quiet spot in Alloa Valley. Murty was wiry, despite his years, and his grip seemed to Black Shawn like the handcuffs already upon him. There was little struggle left in Shawn, and he just stood sobbing, while his gun smoked up between him and Murty.
'What black work is this, my fine fellow?' said Murty quietly.
Black Shawn came to himself, seeing he was stopped by a man and no ghost.
'Let me go, for God's sake,' he sobbed out. 'I've shot Ramsay-Stewart below at the bridge, and the police are after me.' Just then the moon rolled from behind a cloud, and Murty Meehan saw his prisoner, saw that he was young, and would be handsome if his face were not so distorted by emotion. Now there came a sudden sound of footsteps pelting along the road, and Shawn was taken with a tremor, though, mind you, he was a brave man, and it was horror of his sin was on him more than a fear of the rope. Murty Meehan made up his mind.