“It is true that one of you is Terence Gorman’s boy, I knew it, but only Biddy knows which it is. I had no hand in Terence’s murder, nor had Mike Gallagher, though I tried to put it on him. Write that down quickly, and I’ll sign it.”
I wrote his words hurriedly down, and read them over; but when it came to putting the pen in his hand, he fell back, and I thought all was over. But after a few minutes he rallied again.
“Hold me up—guide my hand—it all swims before me.”
The paper with his woeful scrawl affixed lies before me at this moment as I write.
“Gallagher,” said he, more faintly yet, “be good to Kit, and forgive me.”
“God will do that, your honour,” whispered I.
“Pray for me.—Ah!” cried he, starting suddenly in bed, and throwing up his arm as if to ward off a blow, “I’ll take the oath, boys. You shall have the money. God save—”
And he fell back, dead.
Next day an inquiry was held which ended in nothing. No trace of the murderer was to be found, and no evidence but that of us who saw the tragedy with our own eyes. Plenty of folk, who had given him a wide berth living, crowded to the place to look at the dead Gorman; but in all their faces there was not one sign of pity or compunction—nay, worse, that very night, on Fanad and Knockalla bonfires were lit to celebrate his murder.
The next day we buried him. For miles round no one could be found willing to make his coffin, and in the end we had to lay him in a common soldier’s shell. Nor would any one lend horse or carriage to carry him to his grave, and we had to take him by boat to his resting-place, rowing it through the gathering storm with our own arms. The flag half-mast on the Gnat was the only sign of mourning; and when we bore the coffin up to the lonely graveyard on the cliff-top at Kilgorman, and laid it beside that of his lady, in the grave next to that of the murdered Terence, not a voice but mine joined in the “Amen” to the priest’s prayer.