Harry Ormond instantly turned his horse’s head, much provoked at having been duped, and resolved that the plunderers should not now escape. By the advice of serjeants and constables, he dismounted, that no sound of horses’ hoofs might give notice from a distance; though, indeed, on the sands of the sea-shore, no horses’ tread, he thought, could be heard. He looked round for some one with whom he could leave his horse, but not a creature, except the men who were with him, was in sight.
“What can have become of all the people?” said Ormond: “it is not the workmen’s dinner-hour, and they are gone from the work at the lighthouse; and the horses and cars are left without any one with them.” He went on a few paces, and saw a boy who seemed to be left to watch the horses, and who looked very melancholy. The boy did not speak as Ormond came up. “What is the matter?” said Ormond: “something dreadful has happened—speak!”
“Did not you hear it, sir?” said the boy: “I’d be loth to tell it you.”
“Has any thing happened to—”
“Sir Herbert—ay—the worst that could. Running to stop one of them villains that was making off with something from the wreck, he dropped sudden as if he was shot, and—when they went to lift him up—But you’ll drop yourself, sir,” said the boy.
“Give him some of the water out of the bucket, can’t ye?”
“Here’s my cap,” said the serjeant. Ormond was made to swallow the water, and, recovering his senses, heard one of the soldiers near him say, “‘Twas only a faint Sir Herbert took, I’ll engage.”
The thought was new life to Ormond: he started up, mounted his horse, and galloped off—saw no creature on the road—found a crowd at the gate of the avenue—the crowd opened to let him pass, many voices calling as he passed to beg him to send out word. This gave him fresh hopes, since nothing certain was known: he spurred on his horse; but when he reached the house, as he was going to Sir Herbert’s room he was met by Sir Herbert’s own man, O’Reilly. The moment he saw O’Reilly’s face, he knew there was no hope—he asked no question: the surgeon came out, and told him that in consequence of having broke a blood-vessel, which bled internally, Sir Herbert had just expired—his mother and sister were with him. Ormond retired—he begged the servants would write to him at Dr. Cambray’s—and he immediately went away.
Two days after he had a note from O’Reilly, written in haste, at a very early hour in the morning, to say that he was just setting out with the hearse to the family burial-place at Herbert—it having been thought best that the funeral should not be in this neighbourhood, on account of the poor people at Annaly being so exasperated against those who were thought to be the immediate occasion of his death. Sir Herbert’s last orders to O’Reilly were to this effect—“to take care, and to have every thing done as privately as possible.”
No pomp of funeral was, indeed, necessary for such a person. The great may need it—the good need it not: they are mourned in the heart, and they are remembered without vain pageantry. If public sorrow can soothe private grief—and surely in some measure it must—the family and friends of this young man had this consolation; but they had another and a better.