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But the beggar sat down on a mat with a loaf of bread, a bowl of goat's milk, and a long cigar which McDermot gave him, and he received idly all who came, even to the sick man, who ere the day was done was brought to the Residency, and, out of danger and in his right mind, lay in the shade of a banyan tree, thinking of nothing save the joy of living. It was noon again.
Where is he? In the Palace?" McDermot shook his head mournfully, for he knew the history of this plague, the horror of its ravages, the tribes it had destroyed. The beggar leaned back against the cool wall and laughed. McDermot turned on him in his fury, and would have kicked him, but Cumner's Son, struck by some astute intelligence in the man's look, said: "What do you know of the Red Plague?"
McDermot was still humming the song to himself as he neared the group; but he stopped short, as he heard the isolated beggar repeat after him in English: "He promised he'd bring me a bunch of blue ribbons, To tie up my bonnie brown hair." He was startled.
"Dats neider here nor dar, Miss Mirim, so dat McDermot bleves you, dat's enough; wat dis chile bleves am her own business. Dem Irish am mighty stupid kine ob creeturs; dey swallows down mos' any thing you chooses to tell 'em." A voice without, uplifted at this juncture, as if it had long been expending itself in ineffectual appeals, now summoned Dinah, harshly and emphatically.
"He promised he'd bring me a basket of posies, A garland of lilies, a garland of roses, A little straw hat to set off the blue ribbons That tie up my bonnie brown hair." This was the song McDermot sang to himself as he walked up the great court-yard of the Palace, past the lattice windows, behind which the silent women of the late Dakoon's household still sat, passive and grief- stricken.
The fate of their officer, which excited the attention of the seamen, and the fall of McDermot, on the opposite side, to whose assistance the Irish immediately hastened, added to the suspension of their powers from want of breath, produced a temporary cessation of hostilities.
I saw, at a glance, that my true policy was to feign a reluctant consent to this proposition, and to determine later what recourse to take, as if indeed any remained to me in that den of serpents. I would consider, as soon as Mrs. Raymond was gone, what measures to pursue in order to elude the vigilance of McDermot, the detective; and then, if all proved vain, I could but perish!
I had shrunk, it may be remembered, from the description Sabra gave me of McDermot, when I heard of his red hair and "chaney-blue eyes;" but to this red-haired, hazel-eyed man I yearned instinctively, for there are moral differences discernible in the temperament greater than any other, and, when a red-haired man is tender-hearted, he usually usurps the womanly prerogative, and gushes.
He occupied one seat in the hackney-coach, which was otherwise filled by the officers of the law; but, when he rang a sonorous peal on the portal bell of Bainrothe's residence, it was unanswered, and, though the house had been watched since daylight by an armed police force, who had no connection with McDermot, it was found, when an entrance had been effected, that the only inhabitants of the mansion were a sick woman, an old negress, and a child, apparently, from its puny size, about a twelvemonth old.
"No debt is paid till I see the face of my son," answered Cumner anxiously. Pango Dooni pointed with his sword. "In the Palace yard," said he. "In the Palace yard, alive?" asked Cumner. Pango Dooni smiled. "Let us go and see." Cumner wiped the sweat and dust and blood from his face, and turned to McDermot. "Was I right when I sent the lad?" said he proudly. "The women and children are safe."
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