A Fair Emigrant, Chapter XXXVI-XXXVIII [pp. 485-508]

A FAIR EMIGRANT.
ever believed him guilty? Who told you he committed that
crime?"
The dying woman shuddered. "Luke said he saw it," she said.
"Luke thought he saw it. But Arthur's spirit came to me in
the night, one of those terrible nights when the roof was falling
in, and he told me he was innocent and in heaven. That is why
I have been willing to suffer; that is how I am so content-"
She dropped back into her slumber, and Bawn was left in
possession of the truth she had spoken. Luke had said he saw
him do it. Then her instinct had not been at fault, and it was
with Luke only she should have to deal. She sat for half an
hour thinking intensely of the likelihood or unlikelihood of her
being able to make any use of the knowledge she had just
acquired. When and where could she expect to penetrate to
the conscience of Luke Adare? Was there any hope that the
tongue that had now uttered so important a revelation might
yet direct her further? Suddenly feeling a desire to continue
her thinking in the cool night-air, she rose softly, and, placing a
small lighted lamp behind the bed so that the light might not
disturb the sleeper, she went out of the room and out of the
house, and felt the breeze quiet her pulses and brace her excited
nerves. Having lingered a short time on the verge of the
orchard slope, she had returned and was about to re-enter the
house when her step was arrested by the sight of a moving
shadow, visible through the window, flitting across the walls
within the invalid's room.
She had believed that Betty was in bed. Could that good
woman have heard Mave Adare cry out in pain, and have got
up to attend to her? Bawn went close to the window and
looked in.
The gaunt, uncouth figure of a man, weirdly out of place in
the neat chamber, was bending over the bed, and then followed a
scene like the horror that happens in a nightmare. The intruder seized the sick woman's hand and shook her by the
shoulder and called her by her name, till she awoke and lay
staring at him helplessly.
He put his long arms round her and attempted to lift her out
of the bed. And then her cry broke forth:
"0 Luke! Oh,! no. Oh! not back there!"
Then followed curses, stamping on the floor, and an unequal
struggle; but suddenly the intruder, man or fiend, dropped his
prey and stood listening. In doing so he turned his face now
towards the door, now towards the window, and revealed to
I 887.]
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