The Return of the O'Mahony - Frederic Harold

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beyond the house—“are as thick with Johnnies as a dog is with fleas.”

      “Thin that house is no place for any dacent man to be in,” said Linsky; but despite this conviction he crouched down close behind Zeke and followed him in the stealthy advance along the hedge. It was back-breaking work, but Linsky had stalked partridges behind the ditch-walls of his native land, and was able to keep up with his guide without losing breath.

      “Faith, it’s loike walking down burrds,” he whispered ahead; “only that it’s two-legged partridges we’re after this toime.”

      “How many legs have they got in Ireland?” Zeke muttered back over his shoulder.

      “Arrah, it’s milking-stools I had in moind,” returned Linsky, readily, with a smile.

      “Sh-h! Don’t talk. We’re close now.”

      Sure enough, the low roof and the top of the big square chimney of stone built outside the red clapboard end of the farmhouse were visible near at hand, across the hedge. Zeke bade Linsky sit down, and opening the big blade of a huge jackknife, began to cut a hole through the thorns. Before this aperture had grown large enough to permit the passage of a man’s body, full daylight came. It was not a very brilliant affair, this full daylight, for the morning was overcast and gloomy, and the woods beyond the house, distant some two hundred yards, were half lost in mist. But there was light enough for Linsky, idly peering through the bushes, to discern a grey-coated sentry pacing slowly along the edge of the woodland. He nudged Zeke, and indicated the discovery by a gesture.

      Zeke nodded, after barely lifting his eyes, and then pursued his whittling.

      “I saw him when we first come,” he said, calmly.

      “And is it through this hole we’re goin’ out to be kilt?”

      “You ask too many questions, Irish,” responded Zeke. He had finished his work and put away the knife. He rolled over now to a half-recumbent posture, folded his hands under his head, and asked:

      “How much bounty did you git?”

      “Is it me? Faith, I was merely a disbursing agent in the thransaction. They gave me a roll of paper notes, they said, but divil a wan could I foind when I come to mesilf and found mesilf a soldier. It’s thim new fri’nds o’ moine that got the bounty.”

      “So you didn’t enlist to git the money?”

      “Sorra a word did I know about enlistin’, or bounty, or anything else, for four-and-twenty hours afther the mischief was done. Is it money that ’ud recompinse a man for sittin’ here in the mud, waitin’ to be blown to bits by a whole plantation full of soldiers, as I am here, God help me? Is it money you say? Faith, I’ve enough to take me back to Cork twice over. What more do I want? And I offered the half of it to the captain, or gineral, or whatever he was, to lave me go, when I found what I’d done; but he wouldn’t hearken to me.”

      Zeke rolled over to take a glance through the hedge.

      “Tell me some more about that fellow you were tryin’ to find,” he said, with his gaze fixed on the distant sentry. “What’ll happen now that you haven’t found him?”

      “If he remains unknown until midsummer-day next, the estate goes to some distant cousins who live convanient to it.”

      “And he can’t touch it after that, s’posin’ he should turn up?”

      “The law of adverse possession is twinty years, and only five of ’em have passed. No; he’d have a claim these fifteen years yet. But rest aisy. He’ll never be heard of.”

      “And you wrote and told ’em in Ireland that he couldn’t be found?”

      “That I did—or—Wait now! What I wrote was that he was in the army, and I was afther searching for him there. Sure, whin I got to New York, what with the fri’nds and the drink and—and this foine soldiering of moine, I niver wrote at all. It’s God’s mercy I didn’t lose me papers on top of it all, or it would be if I was likely ever to git out of this aloive.”

      Zeke lay silent and motionless for a time, watching the prospect through this hole in the hedge.

      “Hungry, Irish?” he asked at last, with laconic abruptness.

      “I’ve a twist on me like the County Kerry in a famine year.”

      “Well, then, double yourself up and follow me when I give the word. I’ll bet there’s something to eat in that house. Give me your gun. We’ll put them through first. That’s it. Now, then, when that fellow’s on t’other side of the house. Now!”

      With lizard-like swiftness, Zeke made his way through the aperture, and, bending almost double, darted across the wet sward toward the house.

      Linsky followed him, doubting not that the adventure led to certain death, but hoping that there would be breakfast first.

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      Zeke, though gliding over the slippery ground with all the speed at his command, had kept a watch on the further corner of the house. He straightened himself now against the angle of the projecting, weather-beaten chimney, and drew a long breath.

      “He didn’t see us,” he whispered reassuringly to Linsky, who had also drawn up as flatly as possible against the side of the house.

      “Glory be to God!” the recruit ejaculated.

      After a brief breathing spell, Zeke ventured out a few feet, and looked the house over. There was a single window on his side, opening upon the ground floor. Beckoning to Linsky to follow, lie stole over to the window, and standing his gun against the clapboards, cautiously tested the sash. It moved, and Zeke with infinite pains lifted it to the top, and stuck his knife in to hold it up. Then, with a bound, he raised himself on his arms, and crawled in over the sill.

      It was at this moment, as Linsky for the first time stood alone, that a clamorous outburst of artillery-fire made the earth quiver under his feet. The crash of noises reverberated with so many echoes from hill to hill that he had no notion whence they had proceeded, or from what distance. The whole broad vailey before him, with its sodden meadows and wet, mist-wrapped forests showed no sign of life or motion. But from the crest of the ridge which they had quitted before daybreak there rose now, and whitened the gray of the overhanging clouds, a faint film of smoke—while suddenly the air above him was filled with a strange confusion of unfamiliar sounds, like nothing so much as the hoarse screams of a flock of giant wild-fowl; and then this affrighting babel ceased as swiftly as it had arisen, and he heard the thud and swish of splintered tree-tops and trunks falling in the woodland at the back of the house. The Irishman reasoned it out that they were firing from the hill he had left, over at the hill upon which he now stood, and was not comforted by the discovery.

      While he stared at the ascending smoke and listened to the din of the cannonade, he felt himself sharply poked on the shoulder, and started nervously, turning swiftly, gun in hand. It was Zeke, who stood at the window, and had playfully attracted his attention with one of the long sides of bacon which the army knew as “sow-bellies.” He had secured two of these, which he now handed out to Linsky; then came a ham and a bag of meal; and lastly, a twelve-quart pan of sorghum molasses. When the Irishman had lifted down the last of these spoils, Zeke vaulted lightly out.

      “Guess we’ll have a whack at the ham,” he said cheerfully. “It’s good raw.”

      The two gnawed greedily at the smoked slices cut from the thick of the ham, as became men who had been on short rations. Zeke listened to the firing, and was visibly interested in noting all that was to be seen and guessed of its effects and purpose, meanwhile, but the ham was an effectual

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