LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 271, 24 April 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

KILLING NO MURDER, A STORY OF IRELAND IN 1810. By E, G, Curtis. ( Concluded.) ‘Don’t dirty yer fingers on him, boys,’ replied O’Shee, ‘share he’s only doin’ his duty, it’s them that employs him must pay for it. Come on an’ do yer work,’ he continued, making way for the bailiff to enter, and, as he did so, he saw his wife fall back as though fainting on the bed. Without difficulty he carried her wasted form out into the air, and the women gathered round, clapping their hands and keening over her; but she revived presently, and stood with her three little children, wondering and frightened beside her, looking on silently as the cabin was rapidly dismantled. The work went on so quickly, that the road was soon littered with the homely furniture, and the neighbor’s children, delighted with the novelty of the situation, began to play at hide-and-seek amongst the tables and chairs. At last the work of removal was over, and then a ladder was brought, upon which one of the men mounted to strip the roof. Until she saw the flakes of thatch falling, and the rafters, blackened with the smoke of years, beginning to show, Mary had not actually realised that she was homeless. She turned, if possible, more deadly white than before, and in a choking voice called faintly for her husband. ‘ Is it that the sight’s lavin’ yer eyes that ye can’t see him forenent ye, Alanna? ’ said the woman who supported her. ‘ Come to me, darlin’ ;’ and in a moment, his wrongs for the time forgotten, 0 Shee was at her side. i ‘ There’s a change cornin’ over her, whispered the woman, ‘run some of ye for the priest if ye value yer own sowls.’ Even the men who were demolishing the roof, paused, and the children gave up their play. ‘ John, Mavoureen,’ said the dying woman, ‘ the only love J had, I’m going fast. Tell me ye forgive me for troublin’ ye not to hould out about the place, I did it for the best. ’ ‘ Ye never troubled me,’ answered the wretched man ; ‘ but what’s cornin’ over ye at all, at all, darlin’ ! yer turnin’ could in me arms ! Holy Virgin, what ails me wife?’ ‘ Whisht, dear, ’ she said, touching his face with her thin, cold fingers ; ‘ don’t yer know I’ve been a poor sickly crature for many a

day, an’ it’s better for me to go now, an’ lave ye the less to be troubled for ; yer lookin’ ill yerself, John. Oh! may the Blessed Virgin keep ye as ye are, that I may know ye in heaven! but shure I couldn’t forget ye anyhow ; spake to me, John, an’ lay me head on yer breast, it’s weary I am ; neighbors, won’t ye look to him, an’ the poor childre ?’ ‘ It’s only a faintness, darlin’,’ the poor fellow said, as he sat down and supported the dying woman tenderly in his arms; and as he did so the thought of the bloody deed he was pledged to do flashed across him, and he swore, if his wife were spared to him, to break his oath, and, if possible, get out of the country with her and the children ; he would confess all to Lendrick, and beg for his assistance. But it was too late, there was to be no deliverance for him in that way, and the beginning of the ‘ bitter end ’ was at hand. Mary looked up at him as if she had divined what was passing in his mind, and tried to speak. Could she have done so, her last words Avould have been an entreaty to him to break away from the evil fraternity of the Eibbon men; but the effort was vain, O’Shee felt a shudder pass through her, and the next moment she was dead upon his bosom. It will be easily believed that this tragedy had the effect of increasing tenfold the unpopularity of Mr Lendrick; he was accused of having caused the death of Mary O’Shee, and the fact that he had offered her husband a better house and land upon lease, if he quietly gave up his old abode, was either not believed in, or utterly ignored. Rumors of the prevailing discontent reached Mrs Lendrick, and she could not conceal her anxiety; while even Letty grew alarmed when she, and her father and mother, were hissed as they drove through the village. Made quite reckless, half mad, in fact, by the death of his wife, O’Shee resolved that nothing should now stay his hand; he was incapable of reasoning upon what had happened, and it never occurred to him that his own obstinacy, and not Lendrick’s harshness, had turned him out homeless and wifeless upon the world. The evening succeeding poor Mary’s funeral, an indignation meeting was held in the barn, a threatening notice of a most ferocious character, to be served upon Lendrick, was drawn up, one of the meu was despatched to slip it under the hall-door of the big house, under cover of the darkness, and O’Shee pledged himself to do his work before the week was out.

And he kept his word. Terrified by tho receipt of the threatening letter, Mrs Lendrick prevailed upon her husband to consent to an immediate return to England; he did not altogether like the idea of turning his back upon his enemies, but for the sake of those he loved he gave way; and the day but one before they were to leave, he was walking alone across one of the fields, near the house, musing, halfsadly, upon all that had taken place since his return to Ireland, and he could not conceal from himself that he was terribly disappointed, nor that his heart felt lighter at the prospect of going back to his cheerful English home. Absenteeism was no doubt a mistake, but a man’s life was not safe unless he allowed the people to have everything their own way. Thinking thus as he walked along, he fancied he heard a stealthy step behind him; caution had been aroused by the threatening notice; so, grasping his stout stick more firmly, he was in the act of turning to face the danger, if danger were at hand, when his foot tripped in a tussock of grass, and before he could recover himself, he fell dead, with a pistol bullet through his brain. Late in the afternoon he was found by his own servants, with his handsome face placid as in sleep, and his heavy stick still grasped in his hand; and beside him sat, or rather crouched, his murderer, the unfortunate O’Shee, with no light of reason in his wild eyes, which never wandered from the body of his defenceless victim. Some months later he died in the county jail, and for a few moments before the end, the madness left him, and his last words, as he held fast by the hand of priest who attended him, were, — ‘ She said she’d know me anyhow, but she didn’t think I’d come to meet her with Lendrick’s blood upon my hands.’ It is years since the events I have related took place in the county , and, happily for Ireland, the hideous society which gave birth to such crimes, as the murder of Mr Lendrick, has in a great measure died out; but can we be hard upon the son of the slaughtered man for having become a permanent absentee from the country which, in former years, was too prone to think ‘Killing no Murder.’