While Peebles and Desmond were earnestly discussing the strange news of
her resurrection and reappearance, Moya Macartney was seated alone in
the desolate tenement known to the country people as ‘Larry’s Mill.’
It was a dreary, tumble-down place, ill-fitted for human habitation,
and the ‘Larry’ by whom it had been owned had long gone the way of all
flesh. The house itself was built on wooden pillars, and consisted of
an upper and a lower chamber; the former utterly abandoned, save in the
spring of the year, when it was temporarily occupied by an old shepherd;
the latter now and again used as a sort of byre, or shelter-place for
cattle. A rough ladder, several rungs or which had fallen away, led from
the under to the upper room.
The mill-wheel itself, choked with filth and weeds, stood still and
broken, the waters of the stream which had once turned it forcing their
way through its torn fissures and gaps, and forming a slimy pool. On
the night of which we write there had been heavy rains, and the stream,
swollen and black, was pouring through the moveless wheel with the force
and the roar of a torrent.
A truckle-bed with a coarse straw mattress, and a few coarse utensils,
were the only furniture of the upper room. The floor was strewn with
straw. A rude window looked down on the wheel and on the dismal pool
beneath, and as the water roared, and the wind blew, the whole building
shook as if about to be swept away.
The sound of someone stirring below startled the woman as she stood at
the window gazing silently out into the night.
‘Who’s there?’ she cried, turning and looking down the open trap-door
which opened on the ladder.
‘Sure it’s only me, ma’am,’ said a voice--‘Larry Monaghan! I’ve a
message to ye from my mother, at the new mill beyant.’
As the man spoke, his head protruded through the trap-door.
‘I see ye’ve a light convanient,’ he said, pointing to a tallow candle
which stood above the disused fireplace.
‘Yes, sure,’ answered Moya.
‘Kape it burning, to drive away the rats, but mind the sparks--the ould
timber’s like touchwood. But sure it’s not that I came to say. My mother
bids ye come over with me to the new mill, and shelter there, for sure
this is no place for a decent woman.’
‘It’s only for one more night,’ replied Moya, ‘and then I’ll be laving
for my own home in the south. Though I thank your kind mother all the
same.’
‘Saints above!’ murmured Larry. ‘It’s not a wink of shleep I could get
here! They’re sayin’ the place is haunted by the fairies.’
‘Sure they won’t harm a poor soul like me!’ cried Moya, with a musical
laugh.
‘Thin ye won’t come? It’s only a short stretch down the hillside.’
‘I’ll stay where I am, thank you,’ was the reply. ‘I’m a sound sleeper,
and even when I’m waking, I’ve my thoughts for company. It will be
getting late?’
‘Past ten o’clock,’ said Larry, ‘and the rain’s falling heavily. I’m
concerned to leave ye here, in a place so lonesome!’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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