Page:The Mystery of a Hansom Cab.djvu/170

166 surprise, found himself singing "Kitty of Coleraine," as he rode along in the silver moonlight. And was he not right to sing when the future seemed so bright and pleasant? Oh, yes; they would live on the ocean, and she would find how much pleasanter it was on the restless water, with their solemn sense of mystery, than on the crowded land.

Moore was certainly correct in making such a statement, and she would find out when, with a fair wind and the white sails set, they would plow the blue New Zealand waters, and then would go home to Ireland to the ancestral home of the Fitzgeralds, where he would lead her in under the arch, with "Cead mille failthe" on it, and everyone blessing the fair young bride. Why should he trouble himself about the crime of another? No! He had made a resolve and intended to keep it; he would put this secret with which he had been entrusted behind his back, and would wander about the world with Madge and—her father. He felt a sudden chill come over him as he murmured the last words to himself—"her father."

"I'm a fool," he said, impatiently, as he gathered up the reins, and spurred his horse into a canter. "It can make no difference to me as long as Madge remains ignorant; but to sit beside him, to eat with him, to have him always present like a skeleton at a feast—God help me!"

He urged his horse into a gallop, and as he thundered over the turf, with the fresh, cool night wind blowing keenly against his face, he felt a sense of relief, as though he were leaving some dark spectre behind. On he galloped, with the blood throbbing in his young veins, over miles of plain with the dark-blue, star-studded sky above, and the pale moon shining down on him—past a silent shepherd's hut, which stood near a wide creek, and then splashing through the cool water, which wound away through the dark plain like a thread of silver in the moonlight—then, again, the wide grassy plain dotted here and there with tall clumps of shadowy trees, and on either side he could see the sheep skurrying away like fantastic spectres—on—on ever on, until his own homestead appears, and he sees the