“Why, what is it?”
“The owld i-ron bell rang in the night, Miss, and then toombled down to the ground and broke itself in half, and shure the owld sayin’s come thrue already—
“‘The hour the i-ron bell doth fall
Brings throuble to Kilkenty Hall.’
“His Grace, the Duke, Miss, toombled downstairs in the night and they found him this morning stiff and stark as a corpse——”
“Dead?” asked Billie in a shocked voice.
“No, ’twas not dead he was, Miss, but unconscious-like. He must have hit his head when he fell and lay there most of the night. Wurra! Wurra! and it’s bad luck that’s come to him, surely, and he with no toime to ask for forgiveness of the Blessed Lord. ’Tis mony a mass will be said for the sowl of His Grace, and he a-callin’ for his youngest, and a-givin’ to the poor and needy for his safe return. He’s a changed man, Miss, the servants at the Hall do be a-tellin’ me. ’Twas only yesterday mornin’ he asked Patrick, the head gardener, how his wife did as was mother to twins last week.”
Billie could scarcely keep from smiling. Was it so wonderful for His Grace to make a kind inquiry?
“He was nivver known to ask the loike before, Miss, but it may be he felt the bad luck a-comin’ on like a disease, and his little boy, as he once was cold to, kept a-hauntin’ him day and night. The little Lord Arthur is dead, Miss. I’m as sure of that as I’m standin’ on my two feet here. ’Twas only yestiddy a black cat crossed my path twice. ’Tis a sign of death, surely, and his father will follow him to the grave as certain as the owld bell fell last night and broke into pieces.”
Nothing can yield more readily to superstitious influence than the Irish temperament. While the educated classes attempt to resist it, the ignorant are an easy prey to signs and indications. Billie felt that she herself might easily absorb some of it, if she lingered in the land for any length of time. It was a strange coincidence, however, the Duke’s tumbling downstairs the very night the old bell had broken from its fastenings and fallen to the ground! But of course the corrosion of time,—goodness only knows how many centuries,—had loosened the stones in the tower, and the great storm had finished the work of destruction. You couldn’t expect an old ruin to stand forever, and Billie was later to find that half the tower had blown down with the bell. As for the Duke, perhaps he wasn’t as badly injured as Bridget had said. She was glad he wanted little Arthur at last. Here Billie’s thoughts gave a flying leap across a broad gulf of conjecture and landed safely on the other side. In fact, her methods of reasoning and arriving at conclusions were very much like a rider on a fast horse leaping hurdles. While she dressed, suspicions that for weeks had lurked in the dark corners of her mind became convictions, and by the time she was ready to join her friends at breakfast, she had arrived at a determination.
Lord Glenarm was nowhere about at breakfast, which in an English house is an informal meal. The guests serve themselves from “hot water dishes” or from platters of cold meat, if they want any; and most assuredly these young Americans did not yearn for cold meat at breakfast.