“Faith, if it must be done it must,” said Paddy. “It’s no light thing setting a country free.”
“Away with yez now,” said the secretary, “or the ghost will be hunting yez.”
On which the meeting dispersed. I could hear their footsteps die away down the passage, and presently pass crunching on the gravel outside, while I remained crouched where I was, as still as a mouse, hardly knowing if I was awake or dreamed.
There was no time to be lost, that I could plainly see. But how to prevent this wicked crime was what puzzled me. I could not hope to gain admittance to Knockowen at this time of night; or if I did, I should probably only thwart my own object, and subject myself to arrest as the associate of assassins. His honour, I knew, was in the habit of starting betimes when business called him to Malin. If I was to do anything, it must be on the Black Hill itself; and thither, accordingly, I resolved to go.
But before I quitted Kilgorman I had another duty scarcely less sacred than that of saving a life from destruction. I stood on the very spot to which my mother’s last message had pointed me, and nothing should tear me now from the place till that wandering spirit was eased of its nightly burden.
“If you love God, whoever you are,” (so the message ran), “seek below the great hearth; and what you find there, see to it, as you hope for grace. God send this into the hands of one who loves truth and charity. Amen.”
Even while I repeated the words to myself, my ear seemed to catch the fluttering footstep advancing down the passage and hear the rustle of the woman’s dress as she passed through the door and approached my hiding-place. A beam of moonlight struck across the floor, and the night wind-swept with a wail round the gables without. Then all was silence, except what seemed to my strained senses a light tap, as with the sole of a foot, on the flagstone that stretched across in front of the fireplace. After that even the wind hushed and the moonlight went out.
I advanced cautiously over the embers, and felt my way down the room and into the passage without. There, where the conspirators had left it, stood the candle, and the tinder-box beside it. I carried the light back to the hearth, shading it with my hand for fear any one without might see it, and set it down beside the flagstone. All over this stone I groped without finding any trace of a rift or any hint of how to lift so formidable a weight. It seemed fast set in the boards, and gave no sound of hollowness or symptom of unsteadiness when I tried it.
I was almost beginning to lose heart, when I knelt by chance, not on the stone, but on a short board at the side, which ran at right angles with the general planks, and seemed intended as part of a kind of framework to the stone. This board creaked under my weight; and when I looked more closely at it, I discovered a couple of sunk hinges let deep into the plank adjoining, and covered over with dust and rust. With my sailor’s knife I cleared away at the edges, and after several trials, one of which broke my blade, I managed to raise it and swing it back on its hinges.
The slight cavity below was full of dirt and rubbish, and it was not till I had cleared these away that I found it ran partly under the adjoining flagstone. The hole was too small to look into, but I could get in my hand, and after some groping came upon what I wanted.