Historical fiction; Ireland -- History -- Rebellion of 1798 -- Fiction
to the piper.
“Don’t be playing that tune, Phelim. Play your reel again. There’s
trouble where those French tunes are played. It was so in Belfast a
while ago. We want no riot in Antrim nor dragoons in our streets.”
“I’m thinking,” said the blind man, “that it’s the voice of Mr.
Macartney, the Rector of Antrim, that I’m listening to. Well, reverend
sir, I’ll stop my tune at your bidding. Not because you’re a magistrate,
nor yet because you’re a great man, but just for the sake of the letter
you wrote to save William Orr from being hanged.”
The pipes gave a long wail and were silent. Then another man came up the
street. Neal could not see his face, for his hat was slouched over it,
but the sound of his voice reached the open window.
“What’s this, boys? What’s this? Which of you is it bids the piper stop
his tune? It’s only cowards and Orangemen that don’t like that tune.”
The voice struck Neal as one that he had heard before, but he could not
recollect where he had heard it. He leaned out of the window to hear
better.
The clergyman stepped out into the road and confronted the newcomer.
“It was I who bid the piper stop that tune. What have you to say to me?”
The other approached him swaggering, then hesitated, stood still, took
off his hat, and held it in his hand.
“Oh, nothing to you, nothing at all, Mr. Macartney. I did not know you
were here. Indeed, you were quite right to stop the man. As for what I
said, I beg you to forget it. It was nothing but a joke, a little joke
of mine.”
He bowed and cringed. He spoke in a deprecating whine, very different
from the blustering tone he had used before. Neal’s interest in the
scene before him became suddenly very acute. He was almost certain now
that he recognised the voice. The whining tone brought back to him the
night when he had interfered with James Finlay’s salmon poaching. The
voice was, he felt sure of it, Finlay’s voice. He drew back quickly,
and from within the window watched Finlay pass through the inn door. He
heard his steps in the passage, heard him open the door of the room in
which the travellers were gathered. Neal shrank back into the shadow of
the window seat and watched.
Finlay swaggered across the floor and then paused and looked at Donald
Ward, who smoked his pipe in the chimney corner. Then he turned to the
other two.
“I don’t know this gentleman,” he said. “Is he----?”
He paused, his eyebrows elevated, his face expressing significant
interrogation. Neal saw him plainly in the lamp light. He had not been
mistaken in the voice. It was James Finlay. The man who had guided them
to the inn rose without speaking and led the way to the private room
which the maid had prepared for his reception. Neal jumped down from his
seat and approached his uncle.
“Uncle Donald,” he said, “that was James Finlay, the man we are looking
for.”
Donald took his pipe out of his mouth and looked hard at Neal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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