style="font-size:15px;"> "We want your promise to pay in the event of this bail being broken."
"Oh, I see, it's all the same thing in the end; I'll do it either way."
"We'll accept Mr. Murphy's guarantee for your solvency," said Peters; "obtain that and you can sign the bond at once."
"Faith I'll get it sure enough, and be here before you've the writing drawn out;" said he, buttoning up his coat.
"What name are we to insert in the bond?"
"Tiernay, sir."
"That's the prisoner's name, but we want yours."
"Mine's Tiernay too, sir, Pat Tiernay of the Black Pits."
Before I could recover from my surprise at this announcement he had left the Court, which, in a few minutes afterward, broke up, a clerk alone remaining to fill up the necessary documents and complete the bail-bond.
The Colonel, as well as two others of his officers, pressed me to join them at breakfast, but I declined, resolving to wait for my name-sake's return, and partake of no other hospitality than his.
It was near one o'clock when he returned, almost worn out with fatigue, since he had been in pursuit of Mr. Murphy for several hours, and only came upon him by chance at last. His business, however, he had fully accomplished; the bail-bond was duly drawn out and signed, and I left the barrack in a state of happiness very different from the feeling with which I had entered it that day.
CHAPTER XXXI.
A BRIEF CHANGE OF LIFE AND COUNTRY
My new acquaintance never ceased to congratulate himself on what he called the lucky accident that had led him to the barracks that morning, and thus brought about our meeting. "Little as you think of me, my dear," said he, "I'm one of the Tiernays of Timmahoo myself; faix, until I saw you, I thought I was the last of them! There are eight generations of us in the church-yard at Kells, and I was looking to the time when they'd lay my bones there, as the last of the race, but I see there's better fortune before us."
"But you have a family I hope?"
"Sorrow one belonging to me. I might have married when I was young, but there was a pride in me to look for something higher than I had any right, except from blood, I mean; for a better stock than our own isn't to be found; and that's the way years went over and I lost the opportunity, and here I am now an old bachelor, without one to stand to me, barrin' it be yourself."
The last words were uttered with a tremulous emotion, and on turning toward him I saw his eyes swimming with tears, and perceived that some strong feeling was working within him.
"You can't suppose I can ever forget what I owe you, Mr. Tiernay."
"Call me Pat, Pat Tiernay," interrupted he, roughly.
"I'll call you what you please," said I, "if you let me add friend to it."
"That's enough; we understand one another now, no more need be said; you'll come home and live with me. It's not long, maybe, you'll have to do that same; but when I go you'll be heir to what I have: 'tis more, perhaps, than many supposes, looking at the coat and the gaiters I'm wearin'. Mind, Maurice, I don't want you, nor I don't expect you to turn farmer like myself. You need never turn a hand to any thing. You'll have your horse to ride – two if you like it. Your time will be all your own, so that you spend a little of it, now and then, with me, and as much divarsion as ever you care for."
I have condensed into a few words the substance of a conversation which lasted till we reached Baldoyle; and passing through that not over-imposing village, gained the neighborhood of the sea-shore, along which stretched the farm of the "Black Pits," a name derived, I was told, from certain black holes that were dug in the sands by fishermen in former times, when the salt tide washed over the pleasant fields where corn was now growing. A long, low, thatched cabin, with far more indications of room and comfort than pretension to the picturesque, stood facing the sea. There were neither trees nor shrubs around it, and the aspect of the spot was bleak and cheerless enough, a coloring a dark November day did nothing to dispel.
It possessed one charm, however, and had it been a hundred times inferior to what it was, that one would have compensated for all else – hearty welcome met me at the door, and the words, "This is your home, Maurice," filled my heart with happiness.
Were I to suffer myself to dwell even in thought on this period of my life, I feel how insensibly I should be led away into an inexcusable prolixity. The little meaningless incidents of my daily life, all so engraven on my memory still, occupied me pleasantly from day till night. Not only the master of myself and my own time, I was master of every thing around me. Uncle Pat, as he loved to call himself, treated me with a degree of respect that was almost painful to me, and only when we were alone together, did he relapse into the intimacy of equality. Two first-rate hunters stood in my stable; a stout-built half-deck boat lay at my command beside the quay; I had my gun and my grayhounds; books, journals; every thing, in short, that a liberal purse and a kind spirit could confer – all but acquaintance. Of these I possessed absolutely none. Too proud to descend to intimacy with the farmers and small shopkeepers of the neighborhood, my position excluded me from acquaintance with the gentry; and thus I stood between both, unknown to either.
For a while my new career was too absorbing to suffer me to dwell on this circumstance. The excitement of field sports sufficed me when abroad, and I came home usually so tired at night that I could barely keep awake to amuse Uncle Pat with those narratives of war and campaigning he was so fond of hearing. To the hunting-field succeeded the Bay of Dublin, and I passed days, even weeks, exploring every creek and inlet of the coast; now cruising under the dark cliffs of the Welsh shore, or, while my boat lay at anchor, wandering among the solitary valleys of Lambay; my life, like a dream full of its own imaginings, and unbroken by the thoughts or feelings of others! I will not go the length of saying that I was self-free from all reproach on the inglorious indolence in which my days were passed, or that my thoughts never strayed away to that land where my first dreams of ambition were felt. But a strange fatuous kind of languor had grown upon me, and the more I retired within myself, the less did I wish for a return to that struggle with the world which every active life engenders. Perhaps – I can not now say if it were so – perhaps I resented the disdainful distance with which the gentry treated me, as we met in the hunting-field or the coursing-ground. Some of the isolation I preferred may have had this origin, but choice had the greater share in it, until at last my greatest pleasure was to absent myself for weeks on a cruise, fancying that I was exploring tracts never visited by man, and landing on spots where no human foot had ever been known to tread.
If Uncle Pat would occasionally remonstrate on the score of these long absences, he never ceased to supply means for them, and my sea store and a well-filled purse were never wanting, when the blue Peter floated from "La Hoche," as in my ardor I had named my cutter. Perhaps at heart he was not sorry to see me avoid the capital and its society. The bitterness which had succeeded the struggle for independence was now at its highest point, and there was what, to my thinking at least, appeared something like the cruelty of revenge in the sentences which followed the state trials. I will not suffer myself to stray into the debatable ground of politics, nor dare I give an opinion on matters, where, with all the experience of fifty years superadded, the wisest heads are puzzled how to decide; but my impression at the time was, that lenity would have been a safer and a better policy than severity, and that in the momentary prostration of the country lay the precise conjuncture for those measures of grace and favor, which were afterward rather wrung from than conceded by the English government. Be this as it may, Dublin offered a strange spectacle at that period. The triumphant joy of one party – the discomfiture and depression of the other. All the exuberant delight of success
