“I promise I will do as you ask—as I am an Irishman and a Christian.”
That seemed to satisfy him.
“Your hand,” said he, at last.
I gave it to him, and as it closed on his he groaned, and died.
It had all happened so suddenly that for a minute or two I knelt where I was, with my hand still in his, like one in a dream. Then I roused myself, and considered what was to be done.
The dead man was a good-looking youth, scarcely twenty, dressed in the habit of a gentleman’s groom, and evidently, by the smartness of his accoutrement, in the employ of some one of importance. As to how he had come by his death I could only guess. But I suspected the horseman I had seen galloping back towards Brest in the morning twilight had had something to do with it. The highwayman had met the traveller, and shots had been exchanged—the one fatal, the other telling enough to send the bandit flying. The poor wounded fellow had had strength enough to turn his horse into the wood and cling to his seat. How long he had stayed thus, slowly bleeding to death, I could not say; but the diligence must have passed that way two hours ago, and he must have been well ahead of it when his journey was thus suddenly stopped.
Then I recalled his dying words, and after tethering the horse set myself to look for the papers he spoke of. I found them at last—the passport in his breast pocket, whence he could easily produce it, the others in his belt. The former described the bearer as John Cassidy, travelling from Paris to Dublin and back on urgent private business, duly signed and countersigned. It gave a description of the bearer, even down to the clothes he wore: I supposed to enable any official who passed him from one point of his journey to another to identify him. The letters were two in number, one addressed to Citoyen Duport, a Deputy of the National Convention, and marked with the greatest urgency. The other—and this startled me the most—to one George Lestrange at Paris, with no other address. Lestrange! The name called to mind one or two memories. Was not the gay young officer I had once ferried across to Rathmullan a Lestrange—a kinsman of my lady; and was not Biddy McQuilkin of Kerry Keel, who once set her cap at my father, in the service of this same Lestrange’s aunt in Paris? Strange if this hot errand should concern them! All things considered, I decided that the wisest thing would be for me to put on the dead man’s clothes, and make myself in general appearance as near to the description of the passport as possible. In fact, for the rest of this journey I must be John Cassidy himself, travelling post to Paris, with a horse waiting on him at each stage, a purse full of money, a pistol, and a belt containing two urgent letters of introduction. Little dreamed I when I sneaked out of Brest under the belly of that lumbering diligence that I was to go to my journey’s end in this style!
Before I started I buried the dead man, and along with him my cast-off clothes, in a pit in the wood, which I covered over with leaves and moss. Then I mounted my horse, stuck my loaded pistol in my belt, commended my ways to Heaven, and cantered on in the face of the rosy summer dawn towards Paris.