Ireton! some astonished reader will exclaim. Why, surely, we buried him years ago, and are not expected, we presume, to believe in ghosts in this enlightened nineteenth century of ours.
And yet we must repeat what we have written. On his return to London, Walter Herbert again stood face to with Waller and Ireton—the former, with a smile of hypocritical adulation, welcoming the return of him whose father he had aided in murdering—the latter, a hideous spectacle, first dangling on a gallows at Tyburn, and then grimly staring at the by-passers—if those sightless sockets could be said to stare—from the highest spike on Westminster Hall. It was a shocking sight to Herbert—that ghastly skeleton and that ghastly head—and recalled to his memory, with sadness and horror, another but far different head which, ten years before, he saw set up, pallid and blood-stained, on the castled tower of Limerick. God is very just, thought he, as he passed on, with a shudder.
On his return to England Herbert found himself friendless. All his relatives had died, or perished on the battle-field, during the civil wars, and of his child there was still no trace. All he could learn was that he had been sent to his grandfather, then resident on the continent; but where the grandfather resided, there was no means of ascertaining. Tired of England, and the cruelties and perfidies he daily saw endorsed by the sign-manual of one who, he imagined, should have learned toleration and honor in the school of affliction—in hopes also of meeting with his child—he quitted his native land for ever, and joined the ranks of the Duke of Lorraine, the old ally and friend of his former commander, the Earl of Bristol. With him and Sir George Hamilton he fought the battles of Spain for nigh fifteen years; and his last achievement in her service was one of the brightest on record. With a few resolute companions he held his ground for two entire days in the shattered citadel of Cambrai, though the battery to which they returned shot for shot was under the personal inspection of Louis XIV. and the renowned hunchback Luxemburg. The bursting of a shell laid him senseless, and when, after a long and painful illness, he was again restored to health, he resolved, in thanksgiving, to devote the remainder of his days to the exclusive service of God, in the convent where he first learned to know him.
During the recital of the foregoing narrative, which, for brevity's sake, we have given consecutively, and in our own words, Brother Francis was frequently interrupted by his youthful auditor, as new light was thrown by him on events in his family history which, till then, he had never heard satisfactorily cleared up. He had already learned from his mother that his grandfather had been an English officer, supposed to have fallen in Cromwell's wars, though a vague report reached the family that he was seen in Spain after Cromwell's death. Of his grandmother, he only heard that she died young, and that her father resided for a considerable time in Brussels, with his grandson, whom, at his death, he confided to the care of none guardian of St. Antoine's at Louvain, who was his brother-in-law, and who had brought the boy, when a mere child, from Ireland. [{251}] He further learned that, after the completion of his studies, and contrary to the wish of his uncle, who intended him for the ecclesiastical state, his father embraced the profession of arms, and, shortly after his marriage, embarked with the French troops sent by King Louis to Ireland. He fell at the siege of Limerick, and his widow died of a broken heart soon after the intelligence of her husband's death reached her. He was himself then but a boy, and was placed by his mother's relatives at the Benedictine college of Douai, whence he passed, in due time, like his father, to the ranks, and was then serving, as we have already seen, in the Duke of Vendôme's anny.
"But you did not say who the other person was that accompanied you on the march from Limerick to Carrigaholt, or what became of him or his companion," resumed the young soldier, when he had concluded.
"That remains to this day a mystery to me," replied his grandfather, "for I never saw either after we parted that evening. I left them on a lofty isolated rock off the coast of Clare, to which they were conveyed, as the surest place of safety, by a few poor fishermen, then dwelling in a ruined keep on the verge of the cliff's, which, if I remember rightly, they called Dunlicky. Had I much curiosity I might have possibly learned the stranger's name, but I never inquired, and probably, as I did not, my father-in-law never told me. Certain it is that he must have been a person of high distinction, as all addressed him with marked respect, I might almost say reverence, and seemed most devoted to him, though, as far as I could see, he possessed no earthly means of remunerating them—nothing, in fact, save the half-military, half-rustic garments in which he was clad. And as they left him and his companion in one of the two small huts that served as a shelter in stormy weather for the few wild-looking sheep that browsed on the island, they promised soon to return with such necessaries as he might require during his stay among them. On returning to the canoe that brought us from the mainland, I remembered that I heard something fall from the stranger as he stepped ashore on a ledge of the island. In my hurry at the moment I paid no attention to the circumstance; and it was only on our arrival at the foot of the cliff on which the old castle stood, that I found the object which he had dropped lying in the bottom of the boat. Hoping soon to be able to restore it to its owner, I took it with me, and ever since it has remained in my possession; for I need scarcely say, after all you have heard, that an opportunity of restoring it never since presented itself. I still retain it, with the father guardian's permission, in hopes of one day discovering its lawful claimant."
Here Brother Francis drew from the folds of his garment a small ebony crucifix, inlaid with pearl, and richly set in gold, and, reverently kissing it, handed it to his companion. The latter, after carefully examining it, read the following inscription, beautifully engraved in text characters round the rim—
"J. B. RINUC. LEG. AP. R.R.D.D.
EDM DO. O'DWYER EP O.
LUIM I. M.DCXLVI."
Still the history and after fate of the owner of the crucifix remained a mystery to them. Perhaps some reader of the foregoing pages may be able to throw some light on the subject, if not for their benefit, at least for ours.
Little more remains to be told of Brother Francis. In his ninetieth year he died peacefully in the midst of the brotherhood with whom so many years of his life had been happily spent—and his eyes were closed in death by the hands of Eily O'Brien's grandchild, young Gerald Herbert, who had likewise joined the order, and given up the camp and its turmoil, and the world and its deceit, to don the cowl of St. Francis, and spend the rest of his days with the humble, hospitable Capuchins of Bruges.