Daniel O'Neill had left the Big House and gone to live in his mother's old cottage for two reasons—first, to delude the law into the idea that he was himself utterly ruined by the bankruptcy to which he had brought the whole island; and next, to gratify the greed of his mistress, who wanted to get him to herself at the end, so that he might be persuaded to marry her (if it were only on his death-bed) and so establish, against any claim of his daughter's, her widow's rights in what a husband leaves behind him—which is half of everything in Ellan.
What connection this had with the man's desire to get hold of the child I had yet to learn; but I meant to learn it without another hour's delay, so I set off for the cottage on the curragh.
It was growing dark, and not being sure of my way through the ever-changing bypaths of the bog land, I called on Father Dan to guide me. The old priest seemed to know my errand (the matter my darling had communicated as a secret being common knowledge), and at first he looked afraid.
"Well . . . yes, yes . . . why shouldn't I?" he said, and then, "Yes, I will, I will"—with the air of a man who had made up his mind to a daring enterprise.
Our curragh is a stretch of wild marsh lying over against the sea, undrained, only partly cultivated, half covered with sedge and sallow bushes, and consequently liable to heavy mists. There was a mist over it that night, and hence it was not easy even for Father Dan (accustomed to midnight visits to curragh cottages) to find the house which had once been the home of "Neale the Lord."
We rooted it out at last by help of the parish constable, who was standing at the corner of a by-road talking to the coachman of a gorgeous carriage waiting there, with its two splendid horses smoking in the thick night air.
When, over the shingle of what we call "the street," we reached the low straggling crofter-cottage under its thick trammon tree (supposed to keep off the evil spirits), I rapped with my knuckles at the door, and it was opened by a tall scraggy woman with a candle in her hand.
This was Nessy MacLeod, harder and uglier than ever, with her red hair combed up, giving her the appearance of a bunch of carrots over two stalks of rhubarb.
Almost before I had time to say that we had come to see Mr. O'Neill, and to step into the house while saying so, a hoarse, husky, querulous man's voice cried from within:
"Who is it, Nessy?"