Page:Once a Week Jul - Dec 1859.pdf/95

84 wanted, so poor Con was clapped into goal and kep there, and poor Noreen undtherwent such a parsecution that she dhrooped away to nothing; indeed people said, that to save poor Con from the hulks, she did more nor she ought for Mr. O’Mara; be that as it may, the day poor Con got out of gaol and kem home, Noreen died blessin’ him and the dawshy girleen. The next day the bailiff kem and saized everything on the farm for the rint that became due while Con was in prison, and two days afther Con Flaherty rowled up his poor little girleen in his frieze cota-more and left the home that had been his and his father’s, and grandfather’s before him, a desperate and a ruined man, and, as he left Tubbermore, he swore an awful oath that he would have a deep and bloody revenge on Misthur Dan O’Mara.

“Well, yer honor, the agint heard that Con was goin about threatenin his life, and he went and swore his life was in danger. Oh! yer honor, it would make yer heart bleed if I was to tell you the way they hunted that poor fellow through the counthry; that big black villain always in his thracks, until the neighbours began to cry shame on him; the poor fellow he was like a specthre, and night or day he never left the little, dawshy, darlin Noreen; the dyin prayer of his lost, ruined colleen was always ringin in his ears; he always kept her wrapt up in his big coat, and no matter where he was hunted, little Noreen was always wid him. The neighbours at last missed him for a day or two, and whin they wint to look afther him wid some food in some of his hidin places, they found him lyin on that green mound, and there too was the dead body of the little colleen, the jewel of his poor broken heart. They buried the poor darlin there and then, and many is the night the figure of poor Con could be seen sthretched upon her little grave, for his all was there.

“One wild night the agint had to go through the Black Pass, as it was thin called, and his cowardly heart quailed within him, as he remembered havin heerd tell how Con Flaherty’s child that he had murthered was buried there; bud he couldn’t go back, for the night was wild and stormy. When he got fairly opposite the mound his heart lepped up in his mouth, as he saw a tall, dark, figure glide down from it, cross the river, and stand fair in his way.

‘Who-o-’s-e there?’ says he, every hair on his head stannin of an ind.

‘Me!’ says a voice, that sounded more like one from the grave than anything else.

‘Who are you?’ says he, the voice makin him bould.

‘Con Flaherty!’ was the answer.

‘Oh, you black villain!’ shouts O’Mara, ‘would you murther a difinceless man?’

‘My wife was difinceless, and so was my child!’ said O’Flaherty. ‘And you murthered thim.’