"Peace, scoffer! peace!" cried the captain. "And if thou wouldst have thy blasphemy against the Lord and against his saints forgiven, in this world or the next, look once more on the face of the prisoner, and be not shamefaced or afraid, but say out boldly whether you can swear to her in a court of justice as being the person whom you espied just now in the act—yea, the very act of murder."
"I can," said the woman shortly, and avoiding the eye of Mrs. Netterville as she spoke.
"Thou canst?" the latter said in a tone of indignant astonishment. "And pray, if thou wert watching me so narrowly, why didst thou not endeavor to prevent me?—why not strike up my weapon?—why not cry out, at least, so as to rouse up the sleeping soldier?"
"I did what I could," the woman sullenly responded. "I sought out his comrades. It was their look-out, not mine, and to them accordingly I left it."
"She speaks the truth, as we who so lately heard her tale can testify," the captain answered quickly. "You see, my men," he added, addressing the other soldiers, "Beelzebub is divided against himself, and the very children of his kingdom bear witness against each other. Surely the woman Netterville is guilty. Take her, therefore, some of you, a prisoner to the castle, while the rest prepare a decent burial for our murdered brother. I myself must speak apart with the witness Deborah, in order to put her testimony into a fitting shape to be laid before the court of my lords, the high commissioners of justice."
Chapter V.
The sun had climbed well-nigh midway in the heavens, lighting up Clew Bay and its hundred isles until they glinted like emeralds in the blue setting of the sea, as an old, white-haired man and a young girl—the latter carrying a small bundle in one hand, while with the other she supported the failing strength of her companion, made their way, slowly and painfully, along the valley through which runs the bright "Eriff" river on its way to the ocean. Following the up course of the stream, they had passed, almost without knowing it, through some of the finest of the mountain scenery of the west, up hill and down hill, by pretty cascades, in which the river seemed to be playing with the obstacles which opposed it; round huge bare shoulders of rifted and out-jutting rock; through dark, deep purple gorges, which looked as if the mountains had been wrenched violently asunder in order to produce them; and now, at last, they found themselves in a quiet, dreary-looking glen, where cushions of soft moss and yielding heather seemed to woo them to repose. Nevertheless, footsore and worn out as they evidently were, they continued to press bravely forward until they had nearly arrived at the farther end of the valley; but by that time the old man's head had begun to droop wearily on his breast, and his steps had become so languid and uncertain that it was evident it would be perilous to proceed farther without giving him the rest he so absolutely required. Choosing, therefore, a little nook, where the turf grew soft and dry, and where clusters of tall fern and heather, rising nearly six feet from the root, seemed to promise at least partial shelter from the midday sun, the girl quietly disposed of her bundle as a pillow for his head, and invited him with a smile to a siesta. He obeyed as readily as if he had been a child, and she then sat down beside him, crooning an old nursery lullaby to hush him into slumber. But she sought no such salutary oblivion for herself; and no sooner had his eyes begun to close in sleep than she rose, and, as if anxiety had rendered her incapable of remaining quiet, wandered restlessly on until she reached the top of a hill which shut in the valley from the land beyond. There she paused, fear and foreboding, weariness and sorrow, all forgotten or swallowed up in the breathless admiration which took instant possession of her soul. Around her, crumbled and tumbled in all directions, were hills bare indeed of trees, but green to the very summit, and strangely picturesque in the fantastic variety of their forms. There were quiet glens and solemn, rock-strewn passes, with streamlets swelled into cataracts by the rains of spring, yet looking in the distance like mere threads of liquid silver spirting from their rugged sides. There were long brown tracts of peat land, brightened and relieved by patches of golden, flowering gorse, or of that thin herbage which, in its perfectly emerald green, is only to be seen in such like boggy places; and over and above all this, there were the shadowy outlines of more than one far-off range of mountains melting into the delicate blue background of the sky, and changing color, as rapidly as the young cheek of beauty, beneath the ever-shifting lights and shadows of that "cloud scenery" which is nowhere more beautiful or varied than in Ireland. To the left, and looking, in the clear atmosphere, so close that she almost felt she could have touched it with her outstretched hand, rose "Croagh Patrick," sacred to the memory of Ireland's great apostle; and Clew Bay lay, or seemed to lie, bright and shining at her feet—Clew Bay, with its gracefully winding shore, and its archipelago of islets; some bold, beetling rocks, ready and able to do battle with the storm, others mere baskets of verdure floating on the tide; while the largest and most picturesque of them all, the sea, girt kingdom of Grana-Uaile, Clare Island, stood bravely up, cliff over cliff, at the very mouth of the harbor, guarding it against the winter encroachments of the Atlantic, which, green as liquid jasper, and calm, in that summer weather, as a giant sleeping in the sunshine, unrolled itself beyond. Long and wistfully Nellie fixed her gaze upon that fair prospect; and it was with a strange reluctance and foreboding of future sorrow, that she at last withdrew in order to examine attentively that portion of the country which lay more immediately around her, and with which she believed herself about to be more intimately connected. As she did so, a building, perched half-way up a hill, rather more inland than that upon which she herself was standing, attracted her eye, and she gasped, with a sudden mingling of hope and fear, like a person choking; for she felt a sudden conviction that in the wild, uncultivated lands beneath her she beheld the portion assigned to her grandfather by the commissioners at Loughrea, and in that edifice, which seemed to have been built for the express purpose of commanding and overawing the entire district, the house in which they had told her she was to establish her new home. House, indeed, it could scarcely be called in anything like the modern acceptation of the term, though it was probably perfectly well suited to the wants and wishes of the wild chieftains by whom it had been erected. The original building had consisted of a single tower, of which the rough, rude walls, formed of huge stones, put unhammered and uncemented together, betrayed its origin in times so far remote as to have no history even in the oldest annals of the land. Added on to this gray relic of the past, however, a new building was now evidently in process of erection. It was far from finished yet, as Nellie knew by the poles and scaffoldings around it; but even in its embryo state it bore a terribly suspicious resemblance to that square, simple fortalice type of building which seems to have been the one architectural idea of Cromwell's Irish drafted soldiers, and which still remains in many places, the silent but uncontrovertible witness—the seal which they themselves have set upon their forcible and unjust possession of the land. The very look of that half-finished building seemed an answer to Nellie's late foreboding, and with a sinking heart she turned her back upon it and retraced her steps to the place where she had left Lord Netterville. The old man had already shaken off his fitful slumbers, and was toiling feebly up the hill.
Nellie ran back to fetch her bundle, which he had been unable to bring with him; but overtaking him in an instant, she gave him her arm, led him to the spot from whence she had just been taking her bird's-eye view of the country, and, pointing to the fortalice in process of erection, watched anxiously to discover what sort of impression it would make on his mind. But either he did not observe it, or did not take in the peculiar significance of its presence in those wilds; and finding that he remained silent and apparently unmoved, she collected all her remaining energy to say cheerfully: