Nellie Netterville; or, One of the Transplanted, Chapter III-V [pp. 175-190]

Nellie Netterville.
"People in the court-yard!" cried
the old man, now fairly aroused to
that same fear which had been haunting Nellie for the last half-hour.
"What people, Nellie? Tell me,
child, if you can distinguish whether
they seem to be natives or strangers
to the place. Our fate, alas! may
be dependent on that fact."
The girl walked forward, and shading her eyes with her hand from the
blinding sunshine, looked again, and
yet again, in the direction of the tower.
"Yes," she said at last; "I was
not mistaken. There is a party in
the court-yard, and some of them
are even standing in the gate-way,
as if they had but this instant stept
forth from the mansion. Surely,
grandfather, we cannot have misunderstood or mistaken our instructions? There is no other building
to be seen-even in the distanceand this one answers in all respects
to the description. The man, too,
from whom we inquired our way this
morning, assured us that it was called
'The Rath'-the very name set down
in our certificate. We cannot have
been mistaken, and yet-and yet if there be persons already in posses sion, their claim must needs be supe rior to our own."
She spoke hesitatingly, and in
broken sentences, as if she were fol lowing out a train of thought in her
own mind, rather than addressing
her companion. He listened anxious ly, and a cloud gathered on his brow
as he gradually took in her meaning.
"It may be only some of the na tives," he said at last, in a low voice.
"The original owners, perhaps, of the
tower, who have waited our arrival
before giving up possession."
"Owners!" said Nellie quickly.
"They told us at Loughrea that the
owner had perished in the war, and
that therefore we should find it emp ty."
"They may have been mistaken,
Nellie. They know little enough, I
think, those high and mighty commissioners at Loughrea, of the land
of which they are so liberally disposing; and still less, I doubt me, of its
original possessors."
"And if they are mistaken, we
shall take the place of the rightful
owners, and so deal out to others
the very measure which our enemies
have dealt to us. Grandfather, if
we are guilty of this thing, we shall
have a twofold sin upon our soulstheir iniquity and our own."
"What would you have, child?"
he answered pettishly; for, truth to
say, he had yet quite enough of the
Englishman about him, not to be
over-particular as to the rights of
the native Irish. "What would you
have? Did you not know already
that, in the acceptation of these
lands, we were taking that which it
was neither in the Cromwellians'
right to give or in ours to receive?
And what if an old tumble-down
tower be thrown into the bargain?
Trust me, Nellie, the business is so
black already that, like the face of
his Satanic majesty, who is the author of it, a little more or less of
smutch will hardly make it blacker
or uglier than it is."
"I never thought of this before,"
said Nellie sadly; "I thought only
-fool that I was, so selfishly intent
on my own misfortunes- I thought
only of tracts of land left barren for
want of inhabitants to till them, and
of houses emptied by the fate of war.
I never dreamed of men and women
and little children turned out of their
pleasant homes to make room for us
-us who have as little right to the.ir
possessions as the English soldiers
have to ours!"
"Nevertheless it has been done in
almost every other case of transplan tation which I have heard of," the
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