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The outlaws, realizing that the surprise was a failure, and unwilling to brave the arrows sent whistling about their ears from the fighting platforms of the keep, fell back in some disorder. At the same moment a solitary figure appeared, emerging as though by magic from the solid wall of the keep Sir Gavan himself, a father forgetful of all else but the peril of his children.
At Dundrum he met by invitation Carleton the novelist, with Mitchell and Gavan Duffy, the Young Ireland leaders whom he seems personally to have liked, but he told Mitchell that he would probably be hanged, and said during a drive about some flourishing and fertile fields of the Pale, "Ah! Duffy, there you see the hoof of the bloody Saxon."
The cascarilleros explained this appearance as due to former arrangements for gold-washing in an old river-bed, the San Gavan or the Ayapata, that had now changed its locality.
They talked of many things, of the moonlight and the river and the scent of the flowers, but all the time Hugh felt diffident and tongue-tied. He had not the glib tongue of Gavan Blake, and he felt little at ease talking common-places. Mary Grant thought he must be worried over something, and, with her usual directness, went to the point. "You are worrying over something," she said. "What is it?"
But Esmay, holding herself as straight and white as the portico column behind her, made no sign of even hearing, and Quinton Edge fell upon a sudden earnestness of speech and manner. "Then since neither of you have a word to say, you must perforce listen to me of a matter equally concerning you, Esmay Scarlett, a daughter of the Doomsmen, and you, Constans, son of Gavan of the keep.
She was trying to rise, her eyes glazed with pain and her flanks heaving horribly. The blood-bay had kept his feet and his master his saddle a hardy pair, these two. But the desperate expedient had proved successful in that Issa was safe. Already Sir Gavan had her in his arms, and before the horseman had fully found himself the fugitives were under the shadow of the keep's walls.
Sir Gavan stood in the covered way talking anxiously with his eldest son Tennant, who had just returned from an unsuccessful search of the upper orchard. Constans, in his confusion of mind, did not notice his father and brother; he ran across the court-yard to the horse-boxes.
A majestic wave of the hand, and the order "Go and find him!" from the eldest of the children, sent a hurricane of dogs yapping with excitement off to the creek, and the hunters followed at a brisk run. Gavan Blake and Mary Grant trotted along together in the bright moonlight.
To Sir Gavan, Constans, with his dreamy, inactive nature, was a keen disappointment so different from his brother Tennant. And Constans felt that his father did not understand him nor, indeed, cared to do so. Latterly, they had gone their own ways, and now at this perplexing juncture Constans could not bring himself to take his father into his confidence.
I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of one of the leading young Irelanders, Charles Gavan Duffy, after his return to this country, when he assisted at the inauguration of our London Irish Literary Society, which has been a credit to the Irishmen of the metropolis.
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