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Memory was stirring at last, and the gray legend grew from the past, how a maid, Helen of Ormond, for love of her cousin, held prisoner in his own house at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, sheared off her hair, clothed her limbs in steel, and rode away to seek him; and how she came to the house at Ashby and rode straight into the gateway, forcing her horse to the great hall where her lover lay, and flung him, all in chains, across her saddle-bow, riding like a demon to freedom through the Desmonds, his enemies.
A pamphlet published in 1740 deplores the emigration which was going forward as the joint effect of bad harvests and want of tillage: "We have had," says the author, "twelve bad harvests with slight intermission." To find a parallel for the dreadful famine which commenced in 1740, we must go back to the close of the war with the Desmonds.
He appears not to have had a seat in either House; but attended, on his own business, under the protection of his powerful friends and sureties. In pursuing to its close the war in Munster, we were obliged to omit the mention of an affair of considerable importance, which somewhat consoled the Catholics for the massacre at Smerwick and the defeat of the Desmonds.
"N . . no," he said at length. "Better stop and play with Dick. When I come back I'll get you up into the trap, old man, and take you for a drive before dinner. Who's coming, Quita? Just the Desmonds and Courtenay?" "Yes; and the Ollivers." "I'm glad. She's good company." "Which is more than I can say of him," Quita remarked, as the door closed behind her husband. "And he takes me in. Poor me!
Kilmallock, now all in ruins, was once a city of great beauty and consideration. It was destroyed by the troops of Cromwell, the desolater of Ireland. Kilmallock was the seat of the ancient and powerful race of the Desmonds. Buttevant is a poor little place, but containing the ruins of a fine old abbey.
In a week she would follow the Desmonds to Dera Ishmael, and remain with them, at their urgent invitation, till her husband's return. The friendly smile of the sun after days of downpour and restless mist lifted her to renewed hope that in spite of the mountains he would surely reach her in time. From the open door a stream of afternoon light barred the room with gold.
Here the Desmonds were cheered by a reassuring telegram; and here all rested till after sundown, when the pitiless tongas claimed them again; and all night long they fled across the open desert over a track of straw, through an interminable darkness strewn with stars. Now and again a handful of these, seemingly dropped to earth, heralded a changing station, and a halt for fresh ponies.
These distracting Desmonds cheerfully and unconsciously refuted them all! But he accepted the thorns of the situation as toll paid for the privilege of an intimacy he would on no account have forgone, and endured them with the grim stoicism that was his. The Allegretto ended, Honour swung round on her stool, and set forth her Chumba project without reference to Eldred's threatened departure.
The potato was first brought into this country about three centuries ago. Tradition and, to some extent, history attributes its introduction to Sir Walter Raleigh. Whether this was actually the case or not, there seems to be no doubt about his having cultivated it on that estate in Munster which was bestowed upon him by his royal mistress, after the overthrow of the Desmonds.
"He that getteth a wife beginneth a possession; a help like unto himself, and a pillar of rest." Ecclesiasticus. Eldred Lenox stood alone in the Desmonds' diminutive drawing-room, patiently impatient for companionship more responsive than that of cane chairs and tables, pictures and a piano.
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