“But where is she now?” exclaimed Barry, as the gasping man finished his terrible narrative.
“I know not,” whispered the other with an effort. “As I had not an opportunity of paying the stipulated sum to the men who undertook her abduction, they kept the place of her concealment secret from me until I should perform my part of the contract, which I could have done this day, only for the fate that has overtaken us. There is, however, no doubt of her being in the Province, and, likely, somewhere in the very region where we now are.”
“But,” he whispered, with increasing difficulty and spasmodic interruptions, “I feel as if I were suffocating! Water! Water! Oh! God!” And with a bound that almost brought him to his feet, he sprang clean from the ground on which he lay; and the next moment fell back heavily, a corpse!
And so perished the four men, who scarce an hour previously were as full of life and vigor as their hearts were of evil thoughts and designs. There can be no doubt, that they fell through the instrumentality, unconscious as it was, of the very individuals whom they had injured; differing only in their shades of criminality. In other relations, besides the one to which their fate may be mainly attributed, they were doubtless guilty to an enormous extent. Black Jack, Smith and Wilson were unquestionably old offenders; the two former having the heavy scent of blood about them; while Darcy or the pretended Lauder or Greaves, whatever his antecedents may have been, showed himself capable of any atrocity known to the history of crime. The cup of their iniquity was full; or they had not fallen so signally, thus. How steadily the avenging angel follows in the footsteps of the wretch who makes war upon humanity or does continual violence to the divine spark which, in a greater or less degree, illumes the breast of every human being born into the world. Throughout the whole of their infamous career, these men were well apprised of the fact, that they were engaged in open rebellion against God and Nature, and thus it was, that they were cut off in their prime, without one sympathetic tear, to soothe their last moments or hallow their graves.
Such were the meditations of Barry, as he stood over the inanimate frame of his implacable foe; but soon awaking from his revery, he felt how dreadful to know that his beloved was, perhaps at that very moment, suffering in captivity or exposed to dangers consequent upon the disturbed state of the country at some point, where, now that her persecutors, who had at least provided for her daily sustenance, were dead, she might, on this fact becoming known, be subjected to further injuries, or wrongs that might be irreparable. The thought maddened him; and he was groaning aloud, in the agony of his spirit, when his ears were arrested with the returning tumult of O’Neill’s forces, after their having made the second of June, 1866, memorable in the annals of Canada, and those of Irish Independence. Gazing steadily for a moment on the terribly distorted features of his fallen enemy, he turned towards the wide shed-door to make some arrangements regarding the removal of his wounded comrades, when his opportune friend again emerged from the house, and rejoined him as he was stepping across the threshold.
“How fares it with your antagonist, now?” enquired the stranger as he cast a hurried glance towards the body of Darcy, not knowing that its spirit had already taken its flight forever.
“Dead!” returned Barry. “They who assailed us but a short time ago are all gone to their last home, save the man who made his escape on your arrival and interference, whoever he may be.”
“That’s sharp practice,” rejoined the other; “but in my opinion they richly deserved what they got, for they fought as murderers and not as men.”
“Would to heaven,” returned Nicholas, “that one of them at least had escaped the fearful chastisement inflicted upon him; for his death has enshrouded in darkness a question which presses heavily upon my heart, and one that I have no means of solving. But pray, sir,” he continued, “do you reside in this vicinity, and if you do, perhaps you would be kind enough to say, whether you have heard, recently, of the arrival of a strange lady in this locality, who had been lured from her home and friends under false pretenses; and who is, as I now have every reason to believe, in questionable hands?”
“May I ask your name?” returned the stranger, without replying to the question, and eyeing Barry from head to foot, “and may I, in addition, inquire what is the name of the lady to whom you allude?”