A hundred yards from the threshold ran the river, a narrow and shallow stream in ordinary weather, but now broadened and deepened by the rain. It was boiling along at lightning speed, stained deep brown by the clay and peat of the moorlands whence it flowed. The stepping-stones at the ford, by which one gained the road to Castle Fitzpatrick, were covered, and to cross at all a man would have had to wade nearly waist-deep, at the risk of being carried away by the current.
Like a man lost in thought, Conseltine walked over to the bank, and stood looking at the water. His mind was in as great a tumult as the raging stream. All his plans had failed, the whole world seemed leagued against him, and he was now full of a nameless dread, a horror of discovery, of punishment, and of the accompanying shame. Recent events had developed everything that was harsh and even savage in his nature. He had passed from one crime to another, till the blackest of all crimes cast its shadow on his soul; not that he felt any pity for the victim of his evil deed—his dominant feeling was one of fierce rage that the deed had been done in vain. How to act now he knew not. His only hope was in the silence of Peebles, whose regard for the honour of the family he well knew. His greatest fear was of Desmond, should the Squireen learn that his mother’s life had been attempted.
He stood so long brooding there, that Feagus grew impatient, and came to the door to look after him.
‘What the devil are ye doing there?’ shouted the lawyer.
Conseltine looked round, and made no reply. At that moment a strange sound, like the faint shock of an earthquake, came from the distant hills. Both men instinctively glanced thither, and saw, stretching from the black mass or pile of cloud behind the hill-tops, a silhouette of solid black, in the form of an enormous waterspout, its apex in the clouds, its base hidden somewhere in the unseen ocean. Even as they gazed it burst, and for a moment it seemed as if night had come, the whole skies being wrapt in blackness, and the rain falling in a deluge, lashing the ground.
‘Powers of heaven!’ cried Feagus, clinging to the lintel of the open door, and feeling, almost for the first time in his life, a ghastly sense of fear. Before he could realize his own dread, Conseltine stood by him, panting for breath.
‘Look yonder!’ Conseltine gasped, gripping his companion by the arm, and pointing up the mountains.
Light now broke from the clouds—gloomy light with livid rays; and it fell full on a great green stretch of bogland covering the mountain side. The mountain itself seemed rocking as if with earthquake, and simultaneously the bog itself, like thick and slimy lava, seemed to be moving downward!
‘Holy saints defend us!’ cried Feagus.
As he spoke, the sound of human cries came from the distance, and figures were seen wildly moving to and fro. A white cottage of stone rocked, crumbled like sugar in water, and disappeared from sight, washed over by the moving earth.