Chapter III. The Voice of the Tempter.

On returning to the principal street, which was crowded with country people, Dillon found that the one subject engrossing their attention was the wholesale eviction that was pending. Little groups of men stood here and there in earnest but subdued discussion of the news, and curses, not loud, but deep and bitter, were on many a lip.

The appearance of Dillon attracted the attention of several of these little clusters of excited men, and more than one of them endeavoured to enter into conversation with him, for they all knew that his farm was included in the latest order for eviction, and, respected as he was, his now being involved in the common suffering seemed to unite him to them in the bonds of a closer brotherhood.

But Dillon avoided the crowd, and sought as speedily as he could the comparative comparative privacy of the inn with the intention of leaving at once for home. There, however, he was joined by one whose sympathy he did not repel. He was a man of middle-age, lithe and wiry, his quick and restless eye lighting up a face bronzed with a southern sun, and his whole bearing giving evidence of energy and determination.

He was no stranger to Dillon, his intelligence and knowledge of the world acquired in travelling having made him a more fit companion for the young farmer than the ordinary run of the peasantry by whom he was surrounded.

Thomas Manson, though a native of the district, was a comparative stranger to the people, having gone away in his boyhood and only returned a few months before, having, it was said, acquired a large fortune in the colonies, to find that the family which he had hoped to meet in the old home were all dead or scattered.

Manson had acquired something more than mere pelf in his travels; and the ideas of social life which he had imbibed in the free atmosphere of the colonies, and which he had taken no pains to conceal, had made page 7 him to be regarded by certain circles in the district as a rather dangerous man.

Although Dillon did not agree in all respects with his views of men and politics, there was something in his strong vigorous way of treating things that was particularly captivating, and at the present moment there was no one that Dillon would have so desired to see.

‘Dillon,’ said Manson, ‘I am heartily sorry to hear of your trouble, but bear up, old man, it will be all for the best; it will root you out of this cursed hole and take you to where a man's a man and can call his soul his own. It's the best thing ever happened to you.’

‘It may be, Manson, but it certainly doesn't seem so now to me. But I suppose it will be all right.’

‘To be sure it will. However you could live under a brute like that, and be subject to his whims and all his cursed myrmidons, is more than I know. However, let's have dinner, and I'll ride out with you; you're going home, are you not? I want to have a long talk with you.’

It was early afternoon when the two men mounted their horses, and threading their way through the still crowded streets, proceeded on their journey. Small straggling parties of country people were already beginning to make their way homeward, with the proceeds of their marketing, but the roads had not yet assumed that boisterous and turbulent characacter which they usually have at the close of an Irish fair.

The road which they had taken was not exactly in the direction of Mr Dillon's home, but led over the hills down through a plain, which for some years had been occupied for pastoral purposes by a stranger to the district.

‘Dillon,’ said Manson, after they had been riding two or three miles together, ‘do you see that little clump of trees?’—pointing with his whip to a place two or three hundred yards from the road; ‘that blackened beam you see was the roof-tree under which I was born; in that little tangled shrubbery I used to gather gooseberries when I was a child; it was our garden then. You see the little brook there below where our house was; that is where I bathed a hundred times, before I knew what care was, and before trouble fell on our house. I ran away abroad, so that I did not see the trouble come, but I have heard of it all since I came back. The house was fired over their heads, and on a cold winter's night my mother sat cowering beside the blazing timbers, with my little sister in her arms. Sister was dead in the morning. My mother died in the poorhouse. Brothers and sisters are all gone; I don't know where. I have tried to find them, but nobody knows. I was too long silent,’ said Manson, as he wiped away a tear with his handkerchief—‘I was too long silent. I wanted to return wealthy, and surprise them all. But Captain Lewis was before me. He had scattered them before I came.’

‘Manson,’ said Dillon, ‘I did not know that was your history. You never told me so much as that before.’

‘No, Dillon, I have not spoken much of my affairs. I have locked my secrets in my own bosom. There was no use in parading my sorrows. You seemed happy in your farm and in your household, and I did not care for obtruding my grief. You are in trouble yourself now, and can sympathise with me.’

‘Yes, Manson, I am in trouble, indeed, and God only knows what I am to do. But why should I speak of my troubles by the side of the suffering that you have been called to endure.’

‘And yet, Dillon, the man that has wrought that ruin lives, and is honoured, while in my case, and in the case of many others of the poor wretches who have been driven to death by his cruelty, he is a murderer, if ever there was a murderer in the sight of heaven. Dillon, there are crimes for which the law has given no redress. All that Captain Lewis has done has been strictly within the limits of the law, and yet the people are expected to reverence the law as something just and good. How can one wonder that they feel inclined to take the law into their hands? I have been mixing to-day among the people in the fair, and I found their minds filled with a desire for revenge. And who can wonder? “Whoso sheddeth man's blood, -by man shall his blood be shed,” was one of the earliest commands given for the regulation of the relations of man with man, and it is, or it ought to be, at the basis of all human laws. These laws do not reach all crime, and in such a case it is hard to deny the right of man to fall back on the original command and take the law into his own hands.’

‘No, Manson, your principles might be right enough for a disorganised state of society, but there would be no safety for a man, and it would shake the foundations of society, if every time a man felt himself aggrieved he was entitled to constitute himself a minister of his own vengeance.’

‘Mark me, Dillon, I am not maintaining such a right; but I cannot wonder that an impassioned and impulsive people, maddened by cruelty and wrong, should listen to the instinctive voice of human nature, and make a law unto themselves. They cannot but feel here that law is their enemy, that it has been framed by their enemies for the protection only of what are called the rights of property, and in utter disregard of the rights of human life. Those poor wretches who are driven out in winter to die are murdered by the law, and the man that is the author of their deaths is a murderer before Heaven, whatever the law may page 8 say. Captain Lewis is the murderer of my poor little sister who died on that bitter wintry night. He is the murderer of my poor mother who died from the effects of that night's sufferings, aggravated by a broken heart. I can place myself in the position of some of those outcasts who have sickened and are dying of hunger and fever, the direct result of that villain's exterminating policy, and I can understand their feelings when they say he ought to die.’

‘Manson, I am neither in the mood nor circumstances to defend the heartless conduct of which I am myself one of the victims; but however it cuts against myself, I am forced to admit that however many the defects of the law may be, the suspension of law and the substitution in its place of the right of personal satisfaction and revenge would be a disaster, and must fill with alarm the mind of any man that has given hostages to society, and is solicitous for the welfare of a family to which the protection that society gives is a necessity.’

‘I am not advocating a reign of personal law, but have been only stating how natural it is that a passionate people, maddened by cruelty under the name and protection of law, should feel inclined to adopt the wild justice of revenge. This wretched murderer has quickened the natural instinct into life. I saw it in the dark brow and flashing eyes of the people to-day, and I will not be a bit surprised if we shortly hear of some dreadful catastrophe. You and I, Dillon, may regret that it should be so, but violence begets violence, and depend on it, in the present excited state of the public mind, Lord Errington's agent is likely to reap as he has sown.’

There was an air of disappointment in Manson's manner as he bade good-bye to Dillon at the cross roads at which they parted, Manson returning to town and Dillon turning off in the direction of his home.