Her heart was among the hills, and mine had wandered far,
far away to the green groves and meadows of my own fair land. The
music and our reveries were alike abruptly banished by a sharp blow
upon the door. Bell rose and opened it, when a strange, wild-looking
lad, barefooted, and with no other covering to his head than the
thick, matted locks of raven blackness that hung like a cloud over
his swarthy, sunburnt visage, burst into the room.
"Guidness defend us! Wha ha'e we here?" screamed Bell, retreating
into a corner. "The puir callant's no cannie."
My husband turned hastily round to meet the intruder, and I raised
the candle from the table the better to distinguish his face; while
Bell, from her hiding-place, regarded him with unequivocal glances
of fear and mistrust, waving her hands to me, and pointing
significantly to the open door, as if silently beseeching me to tell
her master to turn him out.
"Shut the door, man," said Moodie, whose long scrutiny of the
strange being before us seemed upon the whole satisfactory;
"we shall be frozen."
"Thin faith, sir, that's what I am," said the lad, in a rich brogue,
which told, without asking, the country to which he belonged. Then
stretching his bare hands to the fire, he continued, "By Jove, sir,
I was never so near gone in my life!"
"Where do you come from, and what is your business here? You must be
aware that this is a very late hour to take a house by storm in this
way."
"Thrue for you, sir. But necessity knows no law; and the condition
you see me in must plade for me. First, thin, sir, I come from the
township of D - -, and want a masther; and next to that, bedad! I
want something to ate. As I'm alive, and 'tis a thousand pities that
I'm alive at all at all, for shure God Almighty never made sich a
misfortunate crather afore nor since; I have had nothing to put in
my head since I ran away from my ould masther, Mr. F - -, yesterday
at noon. Money I have none, sir; the divil a cent. I have neither a
shoe to my foot nor a hat to my head, and if you refuse to shelter
me the night, I must be contint to perish in the snow, for I have
not a frind in the wide wurld."
The lad covered his face with his hands, and sobbed aloud.
"Bell," I whispered; "go to the cupboard and get the poor fellow
something to eat. The boy is starving."
"Dinna heed him, mistress, dinna credit his lees. He is ane o' those
wicked Papists wha ha' just stepped in to rob and murder us."
"Nonsense! Do as I bid you."
"I winna be fashed aboot him. An' if he bides here, I'll e'en flit
by the first blink o' the morn."
"Isabel, for shame! Is this acting like a Christian, or doing as you
would be done by?"
Bell was as obstinate as a rock, not only refusing to put down any
food for the famished lad, but reiterating her threat of leaving the
house if he were suffered to remain. My husband, no longer able to
endure her selfish and absurd conduct, got angry in good earnest,
and told her that she might please herself; that he did not mean to
ask her leave as to whom he received into his house. I, for my part,
had no idea that she would realise her threat. She was an excellent
servant, clean, honest, and industrious, and loved the dear baby.
"You will think better of it in the morning," said I, as I rose and
placed before the lad some cold beef and bread, and a bowl of milk,
to which the runaway did ample justice.
"Why did you quit your master, my lad?" said Moodie.
"Because I could live wid him no longer. You see, sir, I'm a poor
foundling from the Belfast Asylum, shoved out by the mother that
bore me, upon the wide wurld, long before I knew that I was in it.
As I was too young to spake for myself intirely, she put me into a
basket, wid a label round my neck, to tell the folks that my name
was John Monaghan. This was all I ever got from my parents; and who
or what they were, I never knew, not I, for they never claimed me;
bad cess to them! But I've no doubt it's a fine illigant gintleman
he was, and herself a handsome rich young lady, who dared not own me
for fear of affronting the rich jintry, her father and mother. Poor
folk, sir, are never ashamed of their children; 'tis all the
threasure they have, sir; but my parents were ashamed of me, and
they thrust me out to the stranger and the hard bread of
depindence." The poor lad signed deeply, and I began to feel a
growing interest in his sad history.
"Have you been in the country long?"
"Four years, madam. You know my masther, Mr. F - -; he brought me out
wid him as his apprentice, and during the voyage he trated me well.
But the young men, his sons, are tyrants, and full of durty pride;
and I could not agree wid them at all at all. Yesterday, I forgot to
take the oxen out of the yoke, and Musther William tied me up to a
stump, and bate me with the raw hide. Shure the marks are on me
showlthers yet. I left the oxen and the yoke, and turned my back
upon them all, for the hot blood was bilin' widin me; and I felt
that if I stayed it would be him that would get the worst of it.
