"Sir Henry Ashwoode, I have come here in answer to a note which reached me but a few minutes since. You desired a conference with me; is there any commission with which you would wish to charge me? – if so, let me know it, and it shall be done."

"None, none, Mr. O'Connor, thank you," rejoined Ashwoode, recovering his characteristic self-possession, and continuing proudly, "if you add to your visit a patient audience of a few minutes, you will have conferred upon me the only favour I desire. Pray, sit down; it is rather a hard and a homely seat," he added, with a haggard, joyless smile – "but the only one this place supplies."

Another silence followed, during which Sir Henry Ashwoode restlessly shifted his attitude every moment, in evident and uncontrollable nervous excitement. At length he arose, and walked twice or thrice up and down the narrow chamber, exhibiting without any longer care for concealment his pale, wasted face in the full light which streamed in through the grated window, his sunken eyes and unshorn chin, and worn and attenuated figure.

"You hear that sound," said he, abruptly stopping short, and looking with the same strange smile upon O'Connor; "the clank upon the flags as I walk up and down – the jingle of the fetters – isn't it strange – isn't it odd – like a dream – eh?"

Another silence followed, which Ashwoode again abruptly interrupted.

"You know all this story? – of course you do – everybody does – how the wretches have trapped me – isn't it terrible – isn't it dreadful? Oh! you cannot know what it is to mope about this place alone, when it is growing dark, as I do every evening, and in the night time. If I had been another man, I'd have been raving mad by this time. I said alone– did I?" he continued, with increasing excitement; "oh! that it were! – oh! that it were! He comes there —there," he screamed, pointing to the foot of the bed, "with all those infernal cloths and fringes about his face, morning and evening. Ah, God! such a thing – half idiot, half fiend; and still the same, though I curse him till I'm hoarse, he won't leave it. Can't they wait – can't they wait? for-ever is a long day. As I'm a living man, he's with me every night – there – there is the body, gaping and nodding —there—there—there!"

As he shouted this with frantic and despairing horror, shaking his clenched hands toward the place of his dreaded nightly visitant, O'Connor felt a thrill of horror such as he had never known before, and hardly recovered from this painful feeling, when Sir Henry Ashwoode turned to the little table on which, among many things, a vessel of water was placed, and filling some out into a cracked cup, he added to it drops from a phial, and hastily swallowed the mixture.

"Laudanum is all the philosophy or religion I can boast; it's well to have even so much," said he, returning the bottle to his pocket. "It's a dead secret, though, that I have got any; this is a present from the doctor they allow me to see, and I'm on honour not – to poison myself – isn't it comical? – for fear he should get into a scrape; but I've another game to play – no fear of that – no, no."

Another silence followed, and Sir Henry Ashwoode said quickly, —

"What do the people say about it? Do they think I forged that accursed bond? Do they think me guilty?"

O'Connor declared his entire ignorance of public rumour, alleging his own illness, and consequent close confinement, as the cause of it.

"They sha'n't believe me guilty, no, they sha'n't. Look ye, sir, I have one good feeling left," he resumed, vehemently; "I will not let my name suffer. If the most resolute firmness to the very last, and the most solemn renunciation of the charges preferred against me, reiterated at the foot of the gallows, with the halter about my neck – if these can beget a belief of my innocence, my name shall be clear – my name shall not suffer; this last outrage I will avert; but oh, my God! is there no chance yet – must I —must I perish? Will no one save me – will no one help me? Oh, God! oh, God! is there no pity – no succour; must it come?"

Thus crying, he threw himself forward upon the table, while every joint and muscle quivered and heaved with fierce hysterical sobs which, more like a succession of short convulsive shrieks than actual weeping, betrayed his agony, while O'Connor looked on with a mixture of horror and pity, which all that was past could not suppress.

At length the paroxysm subsided. The wretched man filled out some more water, and mingling some drops of laudanum in it, he drank it off, and became comparatively composed.

"Not a word of this to any living being, I charge you," said he, clutching O'Connor's arm in his attenuated hand, and fixing his sunken fiery eyes upon his; "I would not have my folly known; I'm not always so weak as you have seen me. It must be, that's all – no help for it. It's rather a novel thing, though, to hang a baronet – ha! ha! You look scared – you think my wits are unsettled; but you're wrong. I don't sleep; I hav'n't for some time; and want of rest, you know, makes a man's manner odd; makes him excitable – nervous. I'm more myself now."

After a short pause, Sir Henry Ashwoode resumed, —

"When we had that affray together, in which would to God you had run me through the heart, you put a question to me about my sister – poor Mary; I will answer that now, and more than answer it. That girl loves you with her whole heart; loves you alone; never loved another. It matters not to tell how I and my father – the great and accursed first cause of all our misfortunes and miseries – effected your estrangement. The Italian miscreant told you truth. The girl is gone I know not whither, to seek an asylum from me – ay, from me. To save my life and honour. I would have constrained her to marry the wretch who has destroyed me. It was he —he who urged it, who cajoled me. I joined him, to save my life and honour! and now – oh! God, where are they?"

O'Connor rose, and said somewhat sternly, —

"May God pardon you, Sir Henry Ashwoode, for all you have done against the peace of that most noble and generous being, your sister. What I have suffered at your hands I heartily forgive."

"I ask forgiveness nowhere," rejoined Ashwoode, stoically; "what's done is done. It has been a wild and fitful life, and is now over. What forgiveness can you give me or she that's worth a thought? – folly, folly!"

"One word of earnest hope before I leave you; one word of solemn warning," said O'Connor; "the vanities of this world are fading fast and for ever from your view; you are going where the applause of men can reach you no more! I conjure you, then, for the sake of your eternal peace, if your sentence be a just one, do not insult your Creator by denying your guilt, and pass into His awful presence with a lie upon your lips."

Ashwoode paused for a moment, and then walked suddenly up to O'Connor, and almost in a whisper said, —

"Not a word of that, my course is chosen; not one word more. Observe, what has passed between us is private; now leave me." So saying, Ashwoode turned from him, and walked toward the narrow window of his cell.

"Farewell, Sir Henry Ashwoode, farewell for ever; and may God have mercy upon you," said O'Connor, passing out upon the dark and narrow corridor.

The turnkey closed the door with a heavy crash upon his prisoner, and locked it once more, and thus the two young men, who had so often and so variously encountered in the unequal path of life, were parted never again to meet in the wayward scenes of this chequered and changeful existence. Tired and agitated, O'Connor threw himself into the first coach he met, and was deposited safely in the "Cock and Anchor." It were vain to attempt to describe the ecstasies and transports of honest Larry Toole at the unexpected recovery of his long-lost master; we shall not attempt to do so. It is enough for our purpose to state that at the "Cock and Anchor" O'Connor received two letters from his old friend, Mr. Audley, and one conveying a pressing invitation from Oliver French of Ardgillagh, in compliance with which, early on the next morning, he mounted his horse, and set forth, followed by his trusty squire, upon the high road to Naas, resolved to task his strength to the uttermost, although he knew that even thus he must necessarily divide his journey into many more stages than his impatience would have allowed, had more rapid travelling in his weak condition been possible.

CHAPTER LXXII
THE ROPE AND THE RIOT IN GALLOWS GREEN – AND THE WOODS OF ARDGILLAGH BY MOONLIGHT

At length came that day, that dreadful day, whose evening Sir Henry Ashwoode was never to see. Noon was the time fixed for the fatal ceremonial; and long before that hour, the mob, in one dense mass of thousands, had thronged and choked the streets leading to the old gaol. Upon this awful day the wretched man acquired, by a strange revulsion, a kind of stoical composure, which sustained him throughout the dreadful preparations. With hands cold as clay, and a face white as ashes, and from which every vestige of animation had vanished, he proceeded, nevertheless, with a calm and collected demeanour to make all his predetermined arrangements for the fearful scene. With a minute elaborateness he finished his toilet, and dressed himself in a grave, but particularly handsome suit. Could this shrunken, torpid, ghastly spectre, in reality be the same creature who, a few months since, was the admiration and envy of half the beaux of Dublin?

There was little or none of the fitful excitability about him which had heretofore marked his demeanour during his confinement; on the contrary, a kind of stupor and apathy had supervened, partly occasioned by the laudanum which he had taken in unusually large quantities, and partly by the overwhelming horror of his situation. He seemed to observe and hear nothing. When the gaoler entered to remove his irons, shortly before the time of his removal had arrived, he seemed a little startled, and observing the physician who had attended him among those who stood at the door of his cell, he beckoned him toward him.

"Doctor, doctor," said he in a dusky voice, "how much laudanum may I safely take? I want my head clear to say a few words, to speak to the people. Don't give me too much; but let me, with that condition, have whatever I can safely swallow. You know – you understand me; don't oblige me to speak any more just now."

The physician felt his pulse, and looked in his face, and then mingled a little laudanum and water, which he applied to the young man's pale, dry lips. This dose was hardly swallowed, when one of the gaol officials entered, and stated that the ordinary was anxious to know whether the prisoner wished to pray or confer with him in private before his departure. The question had to be twice repeated ere it reached Sir Henry. He replied, however, quickly, and in a low tone, —

"No, no, not for the world. I can't bear it; don't disturb me – don't, don't."

It was now intimated to the prisoner that he must proceed. His arms were pinioned, and he was conducted along the passages leading to the entrance of the gaol, where he was received by the sheriff. For a moment, as he passed out into the broad light and the keen fresh air, he beheld the vast and eager mob pressing and heaving like a great dark sea around him, and the mounted escort of dragoons with drawn swords and gay uniforms; and without attaching any clear or definite meaning to the spectacle, he beheld the plumes of a hearse, and two or three fellows engaged in sliding the long black coffin into its place. These sights, and the strange, gaping faces of the crowd, and the sheriff's carriage, and the gay liveries, and the crowded fronts and roofs of the crazy old houses opposite, for one moment danced like the fragment of a dream across his vision, and in the next he sat in the old-fashioned coach which was to convey him to the place of execution.

"Only twenty-seven years, only twenty-seven years, only twenty-seven years," he muttered, vacantly and mechanically repeating the words which had reached his ear from those who were curiously reading the plate upon the coffin as he entered the coach – "only twenty-seven, twenty-seven."

The awful procession moved on to the place of its final destination; the enormous mob rushing along with it – crowding, jostling, swearing, laughing, whistling, quarrelling, and hustling, as they forced their way onward, and staring with coarse and eager curiosity whenever they could into the vehicle in which Ashwoode sat. All the sights – the haggard, smirched, and eager faces, the prancing horses of the troopers, the well-known shops and streets, and the crowded windows – all sailed by his eyes like some unintelligible and heart-sickening dream. The place of public execution for criminals was then, and continued to be for long after, a spot significantly denominated "Gallows Hill," situated in the neighbourhood of St. Stephen's Green, and not far from the line at present traversed by Baggot Street. There a permanent gallows was erected, and thither, at length, amid thousands of crowding spectators, the melancholy procession came, and proceeded to the centre of area, where the gallows stood, with the long new rope swinging in the wind, and the cart and the hangman, with the guard of soldiers, prepared for their reception. The vehicles drew up, and those who had to play a part in the dreadful scene descended. The guard took their place, preserving a narrow circle around the fatal spot, free from the pressure of the crowd. The carriages were driven a little away, and the coffin was placed close under the gallows, while Ashwoode, leaning upon the chaplain and upon one of the sheriffs, proceeded toward the cart, which made the rude platform on which he was to stand.

"Sir Henry Ashwoode," observes a contemporary authority, the Dublin Journal, "showed a great deal of calmness and dignity, insomuch that a great many of the mob, especially among the women, were weeping. His figure and features were handsome, and he was finely dressed. He prayed a short time with the ordinary, and then, with little assistance, mounted the hurdle, whence he spoke to the people, declaring his innocence with great solemnity. Then the hangman loosened his cravat, and opened his shirt at the neck, and Sir Henry turning to him, bid him, as it was understood, to take a ring from his finger, for a token of forgiveness, which he did, and then the man drew the cap over his eyes; but he made a sign, and the hangman lifted it up again, and Sir Henry, looking round at all the multitude, said again, three times, 'In the presence of God Almighty, I stand here innocent;' and then, a minute after, 'I forgive all my enemies, and I die innocent;' then he spoke a word to the hangman, and the cap being pulled down, and the rope quickly adjusted, the hurdle was moved away, and he swung off, the people with one consent crying out the while. He struggled for a long time, and very hard; and not for more than an hour was the body cut down, and laid in the coffin. He was buried in the night-time. His last dying words have begot among most people a great opinion of his innocence, though the lawyers still hold to it that he was guilty. It was said that Mr. Blarden, the prosecutor, was in a house in Stephen's Green, to see the hanging, and as soon as the mob heard it, they went and broke the windows, and, but for the soldiers, would have forced their way in, and done more violence."

Thus speaks the Dublin Journal, and the extract needs no addition from us.

Gladly do we leave this hateful scene, and turn from the dreadful fate of him whose follies and vices had wrought so much misery to others, and ended in such fearful ignominy and destruction to himself. We leave the smoky town, with all its fashion, vice, and villainy; its princely equipages; its prodigals; its paupers; its great men and its sycophants; its mountebanks and mendicants; its riches and its wretchedness. We leave that old city of strange compounds, where the sublime and the ridiculous, deep tragedies and most whimsical farces are ever mingling – where magnificence and squalor rub shoulders day by day, and beggars sit upon the steps of palaces. How much of what is wonderful, wild, and awful, has not thy secret history known! How much of the romance of human act and passion, vicissitude, joy and sorrow, grandeur and despair, has there not lived, and moved, and perished, age after age, under thy perennial curtain of solemn smoke!

Far, far behind, we leave the sickly smoky town – and over the far blue hills and wooded country – through rocky glens, and by sonorous streams, and over broad undulating plains, and through the quiet villages, with their humble thatched roofs from which curls up the light blue smoke among the sheltering bushes and tall hedge-rows – through ever-changing scenes of softest rural beauty, in day time and at even-tide, and by the wan, misty moonlight, we follow the two travellers who ride toward the old domain of Ardgillagh.

The fourth day's journey brought them to the little village which formed one of the boundaries of that old place. But, long ere they reached it, the sun had gone down behind the distant hills, under his dusky canopy of crimson clouds, and the pale moon had thrown its broad light and shadows over the misty landscape. Under the soft splendour of the moon, chequered by the moving shadows of the tall and ancient trees, they rode into the humble village – no sound arose to greet them but the desultory baying of the village dogs, and the soft sighing of the light breeze through the spreading boughs – and no signal of waking life was seen, except, few and far between, the red level beam of some still glowing turf fire, shining through the rude and narrow aperture that served the simple rustic instead of casement.

At one of these humble dwellings Larry Toole applied for information, and with ready courtesy the "man of the house," in person, walked with them to the entrance of the place, and shoved open one of the valves of the crazy old gate, and O'Connor rode slowly in, following, with his best caution, the directions of his guide. His honest squire, Larry, meanwhile, loitered a little behind, in conference with the courteous peasant, and with the laudable intention of procuring some trifling refection, which, however, he determined to swallow without dismounting, and with all convenient dispatch, bearing in mind a wholesome remembrance of the disasters which followed his convivial indulgence in the little town of Chapelizod. While Larry thus loitered, O'Connor followed the wild winding avenue which formed the only approach to the old mansion. This rude track led him a devious way over slopes, and through hollows, and by the broad grey rocks, white as sheeted phantoms in the moonlight, and the thick weeds and brushwood glittering with the heavy dew of night, and through the beautiful misty vistas of the ancient wild wood, now still and solemn as old cathedral aisles. Thus, under the serene and cloudless light of the sailing moon, he had reached the bank of the broad and shallow brook whose shadowy nooks and gleaming eddies were canopied under the gnarled and arching boughs of the hoary thorn and oak – and here tradition tells a marvellous tale.

It is narrated that when O'Connor reached this point, his jaded horse stopped short, refusing to cross the stream, and when urged by voice and spur, reared, snorted, and by every indication exhibited the extremest terror and an obstinate reluctance to pass the brook. The rider dismounted – took his steed by the head, patted and caressed him, and by every art endeavoured to induce him to traverse the little stream, but in vain; while thus fruitlessly employed, his attention was arrested by the sounds of a female voice, in low and singularly sweet and plaintive lamentation, and looking across the water, for the first time he beheld the object which so affrighted his steed. It was a female figure arrayed in a mantle of dusky red, the hood of which hung forward so as to hide the face and head: she was seated upon a broad grey rock by the brook's side, and her head leaned forward so as to rest upon her knees; her bare arm hung by her side, and the white fingers played listlessly in the clear waters of the brook, while with a wild and piteous chaunt, which grew louder and clearer as he gazed, she still sang on her strange mournful song. Spellbound and entranced, he knew not why, O'Connor gazed on in speechless and breathless awe, until at length the tall form arose and disappeared among the old trees, and the sounds melted away and were lost among the soft chiming of the brook, and heard no more. He dared not say whether it was reality or illusion, he felt like one suddenly recalled from a dream, and a certain awe, and horror, and dismay still hung upon him, for which he scarcely could account.

Without further resistance, the horse now crossed the brook; O'Connor remounted, and followed the shadowy track; but again he was destined to meet with interruption; the pathway which he followed, embowered among the branching trees and bushes, at one point wound beneath a low, ivy-mantled rock; he was turning this point, when his horse, snorting loudly, checked his pace with a recoil so sudden that he threw himself back upon his haunches, and remained, except for his violent trembling, fixed and motionless. O'Connor raised his eyes, and standing upon the rock which overhung the avenue, he beheld, for a moment, a tall female form clothed in an ample cloak of dusky red. The arms with the hands clasped, as if in the extremity of woe, firmly together, were extended above her head, the face white as the foam of the river, and the eyes preternaturally large and wild, were raised fixedly toward the broad bright moon; this phantom, for such it was, for a moment occupied his gaze, and in the next, with a scream so piercing and appalling that his very marrow seemed to freeze at the sound, she threw herself forward as though she would cast herself upon the horse and rider – and, was gone.

The horse started wildly off and galloped at headlong speed up the broken ascent, and for some time O'Connor had not collectedness to check his frantic course, or even to think; at length, however, he succeeded in calming the terrified animal – and, uttering a fervent prayer, he proceeded, without further adventure, till the tall gable of the old mansion in the spectral light of the moon among its thick embowering trees and rich ivy-mantles, with all its tall white chimney stacks and narrow windows with their thousand glittering panes, arose before his anxious gaze.