IN TWO CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER I.

In the fertile valley of the river Suck, just where some years ago such consternation was created by a portion of the Bog of Allen shewing an inclination to settle for good, there stood many years since a farm-house of rather a better class than any of those in the immediate neighbourhood, or indeed in any of the adjacent villages. The house stood a little off the high-road from Castlerea to Loughlinn, and few people who passed failed to observe its well-to-do, comfortable appearance and 'smug' haggard (steading). Its occupier, Owen Kearney, was a very hard-working sober man, who not only minded his own business, but let his neighbours' affairs alone. He was never in arrears with his rent, had his turf cut a year in advance, and got his crops down first and in earliest; so that it was not without some reason that people said he was the most comfortable farmer in the village of Glenmadda. Added to being the most industrious, Owen Kearney was (what few tenant farmers in the west of Ireland were thirty years ago) something of a speculator. He did not tie his savings up in an old stocking and hide it in the thatch of the barn or cow-house, as the majority of his neighbours who had any savings usually did; but despite the repeated warnings of Shaun More Morris, the philosopher and wiseacre of the village, invested in new and improved farming implements and in horses, of which he was not unjustly considered the best judge in the County Roscommon. As he did all his business when he was perfectly sober, he seldom had any cause to complain of his bargain; and the 'luck-penny,' instead of spending in the public-house, he made a rule of giving to the priest for the poor of the parish.

Not being in the habit of gossiping either about his own or his neighbours' affairs, no one could form any correct idea of how rich Owen Kearney really was; but it was generally known that he kept his money at the bank, as on fair and market days he went into that building with his pockets well filled and came out with them empty, and mounting his cob, rode home quietly, long before the fun or the faction fights commenced.

Not so, however, the younger of his two sons, Larry, a wild restless lad of seventeen, on whom neither the precept nor example of his father and brother seemed to have the least influence. Martin, the eldest, was steady and thoughtful like his father; but Larry, with his boisterous laugh and ready joke, dancing blue eyes and flaxen hair, never spent a minute in thinking during his life. While he worked, which was not often, he was as good as two, his father used to say; and 'when he took his divarsion he was the divil at it,' Martin used to add good-naturedly. Innumerable were the scrapes Larry got into, and miraculous were the methods by which he managed to extricate himself. There was not a wake, wedding, or christening for miles round that he was not to be found at. No merry-gathering or fair was complete without him; and it was almost a proverb that Larry Kearney was the last to sit down wherever there was a dance, and the first to shake a shillelah wherever there was a shindy. Of course he was his mother's favourite; such boys invariably are. She shut her eyes to his faults, supplied him with money without any questions, and being a very religious woman, or what in that part of Ireland is termed a voteen, she atoned for all his shortcomings.

There was another member of Owen Kearney's family as full of fun and mischief in her way as Larry; this was Dora Costello, the farmer's orphan niece. Little Dora, everybody called her, because, when she lost her own father and mother, and went to live with her uncle and aunt, she was a little toddling thing of three years old. At the time this story tells of she was a fine girl of seventeen, tall, finely formed, and as graceful as a willow. A fine specimen of an Irish peasant girl was Dora Costello, with her red-and-white complexion, merry changeable hazel eyes, and rich, reddish auburn hair. There was not a farmer's daughter within many a mile who could scutch or spin as much flax of an evening, nor one who could better milk a cow or make a roll of butter. Bright, intelligent, and good-tempered, with a tongue as ready as her fingers, and a sense of humour as rich as her brogue, Dora was a general favourite, and as a natural consequence had numerous admirers. Being by nature somewhat of a coquette, she managed to play them off one against another with an ease and grace which a London belle might have envied, keeping good friends with all, and giving none the slightest preference. But when it came to a question of marriage, it was a different thing altogether. Dora declared she was very happy with her uncle and aunt, and unceremoniously refused all the eligible young men in her own and the next village, declaring of each in turn that she would 'as soon marry Barney Athleague.'

Long ago, in almost every Irish village there was to be found hanging about the farm-houses some poor half-witted creature, called in one place an onsha, in others an omadthaun, and in the County Roscommon a softie. They were boys without any knowledge of who their parents had been, cast as children on the charity of some village, from which they usually took their names, as Johnnie Loughlinn, and Barney Athleague. How Barney came to make his way to Glenmadda no one knew, but one day when about ten years old he was seen following a hunt. Stumbling over a loose stone, he sprained his ankle, and so was thrown on the protection of the villagers. A glance at the lad's motley appearance and vacant face was sufficient to shew what he was; and as in most parts of Ireland, as in Germany, there exists amongst the peasantry a sort of superstitious regard for silly people, poor Barney found food and shelter, now from one, now from another, as indeed the softies invariably did; in return for which they ran on errands and looked after the pigs and poultry, and were always at hand in an emergency.

As a rule, the softie looked a great deal bigger fool than he really was. He contrived to live and be fed, clothed and lodged without working. He made himself at home everywhere, was generally treated very well, and never by any chance treated badly. He knew everybody's business (for curiosity was one of his virtues or vices), and with the special advantage that people thought he knew nothing at all. All sorts of matters were discussed freely round the hearth in his presence, he meantime staring into the fire, sucking his fingers, or rolling on the floor with the dog, no more heeded than that animal; yet all the while drinking in the conversation, and with a sort of crooked wisdom treasuring it up. Animal tastes and instincts were generally the most marked in the softie; as a rule, he was greedy, selfish, and uncleanly in his habits, violent in his antipathies, yet with a capacity for attaching himself with a strong dog-like fidelity and affection to a friend.

Such was Barney Athleague—perhaps a trifle better and more intelligent than the generality of his class; and there was no place in the village where he spent so much of his time, or was so well treated, as at Owen Kearney's; first, because they were naturally kindly people; and next, Mrs Kearney's religious feelings made her especially good to the poor and friendless; and there was no person in the whole world whom the softie cared so much about as Dora. Wherever she went, Barney was not far behind. He was always ready to do anything in the world she asked him, no matter how wearisome or hazardous. When she was a child, he climbed the highest trees to get her birds' nests, tumbled like a spaniel into the river to get her lilies, and walked miles and miles to recover a pet kid of hers which had gone astray. As she grew older, he carried her cans when she went milking, fed her poultry, and in short waited on her and followed her about like a lapdog. It was great fun to the 'boys' who used to assemble in the farmer's kitchen of a winter's evening to tell stories and gossip, to see Barney fly into a furious passion if any one he did not like touched Dora, or even put his hand upon her dress.

One of the persons the poor softie most cordially detested was Larry Kearney; perhaps because the young man was too fond of teasing him, or else too much given to sitting beside Dora. How or whatever the cause, the poor fool hated him; but with a prudence which one would hardly have expected in a softie, he kept his opinions to himself, and watched his enemy like a lynx. Not once or twice he saw the young man descend from the loft where he slept with Luke the 'help,' after the family were sound asleep, and opening the door, steal noiselessly from the house; and after much consideration, Barney at last made up his mind to follow him and learn his destination, nothing doubting but it was the village public-house or shebeen, or the forge, which was often a haunt for the idlers to play cards and get tipsy in. But Larry took the very opposite direction from what the softie imagined. Crossing two or three fields, he skirted a plantation of ash, on the other side of which was a rath or forth, said to be haunted, and the resort of 'the good people.' The place was very generally avoided after nightfall; and Barney's courage was beginning to fail him, when Larry was joined by three or four other young men, which revived his spirits, and nerved him to follow silently and cautiously as a cat.

On rounding the hill he saw there were between thirty and forty persons assembled in a field, and after a few minutes one of them advanced to meet Larry. The softie, on seeing the man approach, concealed himself behind the ferns and brambles, all his curiosity aroused, and strained his ears to catch the conversation; but the men spoke so indistinctly that he could not distinguish a word till after a little while they drew nearer to his cover.

'Look here, Larry,' one said, drawing something which gleamed in the moonlight from a cave or hollow in the hill-side, within arm's length of Barney's crouching form. 'Look, me boy, there's twoscore pike-heads lying snug enough in there.'

'Good captain,' Larry replied, with his merry laugh, 'an' there's two-score "boys" ready to handle them.'

'Yes; but we want more,' the captain said, as he replaced the weapon in the cave, and carefully drew the thick grass, ferns, and blackberry bushes over it. 'Did you speak e'er a word to Martin?'

Larry laughed again. 'Sorra a word, captain; an' if "Molly" herself was to go an' ax him, he wouldn't join us,' he said; 'an' bedad, maybe he might inform!' he added merrily—and the men moved away.

'Ha, ha!' Barney said to himself as he crept from his hiding-place, and made his way back to the farm-house; 'that's where Larry goes. An' who's Molly, who's Molly? I'll ask Miss Dora to-morrow who's Molly;' and with this reflection he crept into his bed and fell asleep.