'Will ye inform me, Toler,' Curran interrupted, 'who your witnesses are? I'm quite in a muzz, I tell ye.'
Toler clapped the little man upon the back, and roared with hoarse laughter.
'That's the critical brook in the steeple-chase, mee boy!' he chuckled. 'We rely on a surprise to confound the prisoners. But I'll tell ye this, ould chap. Sirr, for some reason, is bent upon a conviction. Nothing you can say will make a difference. So cut it short, and let us out of this nasty hole. Be good-natured, and keep your breath to cool your porridge.'
So his suspicions were correct. Sirr was at the bottom of this, impelled by revenge for those slashes on his calves; urged too, probably, by Cassidy, who had made it up with the town-major. What could they gain by surprising the prisoners? Truly, the mechanism of the law was lamentably out of gear.
At last there was a stamping without--a surge of feet--a murmur of commiseration in the street. The judges, clad in crimson, took their places. Lord Carleton, ponderous and overbearing; Lord Kilwarden, nervous and subdued, with wrinkled brow and downcast visage--the one determined to do his duty, the other to avoid it if he could. Shortly afterwards a side-door opened. Terence and his henchman, Phil, were thrust into the dock. Terence peered round with contracted pupils, unable to distinguish friends from foes in the dim haze. He saw not Doreen, though she was close below. She clasped her hands upon her breast to still a rising sob when she marked how changed he was. Fever had paled his ruddy cheek, shrunken his burly frame. It was not that which shocked her, for that was to be expected. It was the uncanny glitter, the reflection through open portals of a radiance belonging to another world--the look she had last seen in Tone, the glimmer of the grave--that it was which caused her heart to bound. He stood erect, one hand resting on the rail, the other supported by a green scarf about his neck. Even his gaoler had remonstrated as he dressed that morning: 'Don't wear such things. Why prejudice the coort?' To which he had answered, smiling: 'The cause is already judged. It matters not what I wear; Erin will be green again when I rest under her sod--all the greener for her recent soaking.'
In striking contrast to his quiet dignity was the behaviour of his faithful henchman. He walked crooked and stiff, by reason of the whippings he had undergone. Jug Coyle scrutinised him with meaning from beneath her penthouse brows, and seemed satisfied. The trim, obliging, smiling Phil was transmuted into another and quite untidy person. 'Twas not only pain that caused his steps to waver; there could be no doubt about it--he was drunk!
Terence was woundily annoyed; a flush of anger overspread his face as he placed his arm about his companion to check his stumbling, and gave him a savage shaking. Phil drunk, at such a time, who used to be so good and sober! He had not improved under the town-major's auspices. This was no doubt one of the arch-devil's tricks to turn a solemn and impressive scene into a subject for laughter and contempt. It was a pity Phil was not more strong-minded. Had he disguised himself in liquor to steal a march upon his fears? The poor fellow was ignorant and underbred; fortitude was hardly to be expected from such as he. The jury sitting opposite had their orders. Perhaps it was as well for Phil that he could drown the knowledge of the present. On the morrow it would all be over--blessed morrow! Both he and his master would know by dawn the secret which oppresses all of us.
But Major Sirr appeared as surprised as the rest of the watchful audience, and was even heard to utter unseemly execrations. Who had dared to give his pet victim drink? It was no part of his intention that his troubles should be soothed. On the contrary, he had kept a surprise in store which was meant to be wormwood to the hapless creature.
After a deal of whispering and wig-shaking, counsel for prosecution plunged forthwith into the matter of the town-major's calves, and the shocking behaviour of certain ruffians to an upright gintleman, with the connivance of certain leedies, who should be nameless.
Toler's inflamed visage glowered at Madam Gillin; but she tossed her head and tittered. She dreaded not free-quarters, or the visits of virago soldiers' wives, now that Lord Glandore was back to protect Norah. Toler might bray any fiddlefaddle that he chose. Sure my Lord Carleton, up there in the fine robes, had been mighty glad, once on a time, to spend his evenings at her cosy house. So counsel, discovering that he made no impression on her (she had always abstained from inviting him, which made him spiteful), droned on about his client's wrongs--for he had but done his duty in capturing such notorious rebels--his excellent qualities and virtues, the services he had done the state, the wicked wounds upon his calves. Was the law, which all respected so much, to leave a faithful servant without protection? And so on and so forth, in a tangle of verbosity, for an hour and more.