For years he had continued to exist in some fashion or other—poaching the chief source—in the wild spot we have just described; and it was on the rock in front of his door, with a short pipe in his mouth, that he now lay stretched, on a fine autumn morning, lazily gazing down the valley, where at a great distance off he could detect a small speck upon the road, intimating that rarest of all events, the approach of a jaunting-car. He threw his glance upwards to see that his flag disported its folds to the air, and to the sign over his door—“The Vinegar Hill, by T. O’Rorke, Entertainment for Man and Beast”—to be sure that all was in order, and he then smoked quietly on and watched the road.
By a landslip which had occurred several years before, and whose effects had never been remedied, the road was blocked up about a mile from the little inn, and travellers desirous of its accommodation were obliged to continue their journey on foot. Whether from the apathy of hope deferred, or calculating on the delay that must thus intervene, Mr. O’Rorke saw two persons descend from the car, and, each taking his carpet-bag, set out to walk, without the slightest movement on his part to provide for their reception; and this, though he was himself cook, waiter, and housemaid—all that the inn possessed of master or attendant.
Mr. O’Rorke’s experience of travellers included but two categories, each of them rare enough in their visitations. They either came to shoot grouse or convert the natives. All who were not sportsmen were missionaries. A certain amount of peril attended both pursuits. The people were a wild, semi-civilised set, who saw with jealousy a stranger amongst them, and certain hints, palpable enough not to be mistaken, intimated to the lovers of sport, as well as the distributers of tracts, that their pursuits were dangerous ones; and thus, in time, the numbers decreased year by year, till at last the advent of a traveller was a rare event.
The two who now ascended the rocky pathway had neither guns nor fishing-tackle—as little had they of missionaries in their aspect—and he watched them with a lazy curiosity as they approached.
“Are you Mr. O’Rorke?” cried the first who came forward, who was our acquaintance Sir Gervais Vyner.
“Yes, my name is O’Rorke.”
“And the owner of this inn, I take it?” asked Grenfell, somewhat haughtily.
“The same.”
“Is this your usual way of receiving strangers, my friend, or is your present manner an especial politeness to ourselves?”
“Can you let us have a dinner, and make up a couple of rooms?” broke in Vyner, hastily. “We should like to stop here a few days.”
“You can see the rooms, whether they’ll do for you or not; such as they are, you can have them, but I can’t make them better.”
“And for eating, what can you give us?”
“Mutton always—fish and game when there’s the season for them—and poteen to wash them down.”
“That is the illicit spirit, isn’t it?” asked Grenfell.
“Just as illicit as anything else a man makes of his own produce for his own use; just as illicit as the bread that is made of his own corn.”
“You’re a politician, I see,” said Grenfell, with a sneering laugh. “I half suspected it when I saw your green flag there.”
“If I hadn’t been one, and an honest one too, I’d not be here today,” said he, with an energy greater than he had shown before. “Have you anything to say against that flag?”
“Of course he has not. Neither he nor I ever saw it before,” said Vyner.
“Maybe you’ll be more familiar with it yet; maybe the time isn’t far off when you’ll see it waving over the towers of Dublin Castle!”
“I’m not aware that there are any towers for it to wave over,” said Grenfell, mockingly.
“I’ll tell you what there are! There are hills and mountains, that our fathers had as their own; there are plains and valleys, that supported a race braver and better than the crafty Saxons that overcame them; there are holy churches, where our faith was taught before we ever heard of Harry the Eighth and his ten wives!”
“You are giving him more than the Church did,” said Grenfell.
“I don’t care whether they were ten or ten thousand. He is your St. Peter, and you can’t deny him!”
“I wish I could deny that I don’t like this conversation,” said Vyner. “My friend and I never came here to discuss questions of politics or polemics. And now about dinner. Could you let us have it at three o’clock; it is just eleven now?”
“Yes, it will be ready by three,” said O’Rorke, gravely.
“The place is clean enough inside,” whispered Grenfell, as he came from within, “but miserably poor. The fellow seems to have expended all his spare cash in rebellious pictures and disloyal engravings.”
“He is an insupportable bore,” muttered Vyner; “but let us avoid discussion with him, and keep him at a distance.”
“I like his rabid Irishism, I own,” said Grenfell, “and I intend to post myself up, as the Yankees say, in rebellious matters before we leave this.”
“Is that Lough Anare, that sheet of water I see yonder?”
“Yes,” said O’Rorke.
“There’s a ruined tower and the remains of seven churches, I think, on an island there?”
“You’d like to draw it, perhaps?” asked O’Rorke, with a cunning curiosity in his eye.
“For the present, I’d rather have a bathe, if I could find a suitable spot.”
“Keep round to the westward there. It is all rock along that side, and deep water close to the edge. You’ll find the water cold, if you mind that.”
“I like it all the better. Of course, George, you’ll not come? You’ll lie down on the sward here, and doze or dream till I come back.”
“Too happy, if I can make sleep do duty for books or newspapers,” yawned out Grenfell.
“Do you want a book?” asked O’Rorke.
“Yes, of all things. What can you give me?”
He returned to the house, and brought out about a dozen books. There were odd volumes of the press, O’Callaghan’s “Celts and Saxons,” and the Milesian Magazine, profusely illustrated with wood-cuts of English cruelty in every imaginable shape that human ingenuity could impart to torture.
“That will show you how we were civilised, and why it takes so long to do it,” said O’Rorke, pointing to an infamous print, where a celebrated drummer named Hempenstall, a man of gigantic stature, was represented in the act of hanging another over his shoulder, the artist having given to the suffering wretch an expression of such agony as no mere words would convey.
“This fellow is intolerable,” muttered Vyner, as he turned away, and descended the rocky path. Grenfell, too, appeared to have had enough of his patriotic host, for he stretched himself out on the green sward, drawing his hat over his eyes, and giving it to be seen that he would not be disturbed.
O’Rorke now retreated to the kitchen to prepare for his guest’s entertainment, but he started with astonishment as he entered. “What, Kitty, is this you?” cried he; “when did you come?”
The question was addressed to a little girl of some ten or eleven years old, who, with her long golden hair loose on her shoulders, and her cheeks flushed with exercise, looked even handsomer than when first we saw her in the ruined Abbey at Arran, for it was the same child who had stood forward to claim the amber necklace as her right.
“My grandfather sent me home,” said she, calmly, as she threw the long locks back