A boy passing by saw what had happened, and ran to the house, calling as
he went to some workmen, who hastened to the place, where they heard the
howling of the dogs. Ormond neither heard nor saw--till Moriarty said,
“He must be carried home;” and some one approaching to lift the
body, Ormond started up, pushed the man back, without uttering a
syllable--made a sign to Moriarty, and between them they carried the
body home. Sheelah and the women came out to meet them, wringing their
hands, and uttering loud lamentations. Ormond, bearing his burden as if
insensible of what he bore, walked onward, looking at no one, answering
none, but forcing his way straight into the house, and on--till they
came to O’Shane’s bedchamber, which was upon the ground-floor--there
laid him on his bed. The women had followed, and all those who had
gathered on the way rushed in to see and to bewail. Ormond looked up,
and saw the people about the bed, and made a sign to Moriarty to keep
them away, which he did, as well as he could. But they would not be
kept back--Sheelah, especially, pressed forward, crying loudly, till
Moriarty, with whom she was struggling, pointed to Harry. Struck with
his fixed look, she submitted at once. _“Best leave him!”_ said she. She
put every body out of the room before her, and turning to Ormond, said,
they would leave him “a little space of time till the priest should
come, who was at a clergy dinner, but was sent for.”
When Ormond was left alone he locked the door, and kneeling beside the
dead, offered up prayers for the friend he had lost, and there remained
some time in stillness and silence, till Sheelah knocked at the door,
to let him know that the priest was come. Then retiring, he went to the
other end of the house, to be out of the way. The room to which he went
was that in which they had been reading the letters just before they
went out that morning. There was the pen which Harry had taken from his
hand, and the answer just begun.
“Dear General, I hope my young friend, Harry Ormond--”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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