So, after all, it seemed that mystery was to hang over Tim and me still. I could have been happy had the paper said outright, “Tim is the son of Terence Gorman.” But to feel that as much might, with equal probability, be said of me, paralysed my purpose and obscured my path. How was I to set wrong right? As for Tim, it was evident from his brief note, written at a time when he did not know if I had survived the wreck of the Kestrel or not, that the matter concerned him little compared with the rebellious undertaking on which he was just now unhappily embarked.
Tim was, I knew, more of a natural gentleman than I, which might mean gentler blood. On the other hand, I, of the two of us, was less like Mike Gallagher in looks. Who was to decide between us? And meanwhile this Maurice Gorman—
That reminded me with a start of last night’s business. This very man, robber of the widow, unnatural brother, and oppressor of the fatherless, was appointed for death that very morning, and might already be on his way to meet it. I confess, as I then felt, I could almost have let him run on his doom; yet when I recalled the vision in the kitchen last night of Paddy Corkill shouldering the borrowed gun, my humanity reasserted itself. How could I stand idle with a human life, however worthless, at stake? As to his being Miss Kit’s father, that at the moment did not enter into my calculations; but as soon as it did, it urged my footsteps to a still more rapid stride as I made across the bleak tract for the Black Hill.
The morning was grey and squally, and the mists hung low on the hill-tops, and swept now and then thickly up the valleys. But I knew the way well. Tim and I had often as boys walked there to look at the spot where Terence Gorman fell, and often, in the Knockowen days, I had driven his honour’s gig past the spot on the way to Malin.
The road ascends steeply some little way up the hill between high rocks. Half-way up it takes a sharp turn inward, skirting the slope on the level, and so comes out on to the open bog-road beyond. Just at the angle is a high boulder that almost overhangs the road, affording complete cover to any one waiting for a traveller, and commanding a view of him both as he walks his horse up the slope and as he trots forward on the level. It needed not much guessing to decide that it was here that Terence Gorman’s murderer had lurked that fatal night, and that here Paddy Corkill would come to find his victim this morning.
As I came to the top of a hill that gave a distant view of the road by which the traveller would approach, my heart leaped to my mouth. For there, not a mile and a half away, appeared, in a break of the mist, a black speck, which I knew well enough to be his honour’s gig. In half-an-hour or less it would reach the fatal spot, and I could barely hope to reach it before him. The ground in front of me was littered with boulders, and in places was soft with bog. Rapid progress was impossible. A false step, a slip might lame me, and so stop me altogether. Yet on every moment hung the fate of her father!
It was a wild career I made that morning—down hollows, over rocks, through swamps, and up banks. I soon lost all sight of the road, and knew I should not see it again till I came above the boulder behind which the assassin probably lurked. Once I fancied I heard the clatter of the hoofs very near; and once, on the hill before me, I seemed to catch the gleam of a gun-barrel among the rocks.
A minute more brought me in view of the boulder and
the road below. Stretched on the former, with his gun levelled, lay Corkill, waiting the moment when his victim should reach the corner. On the road, still toiling up the hill, came the gig, and to my horror and dismay, not only his honour in it, but Miss Kit herself.