“I’m not goin’ to the stable,” says Sir Dominick; “I may as well tell you, for I see you found it out already—I’m goin’ across the deer-park; if I come back you’ll see me in an hour’s time. But, anyhow, you’d better not follow me, for if you do I’ll shoot you, and that ’id be a bad ending to our friendship.”
And with that he walks down this passage here, and turns the key in the side door at that end of it, and out wid him on the sod into the moonlight and the cowld wind; and my grandfather seen him walkin’ hard towards the park-wall, and then he comes in and closes the door with a heavy heart.
Sir Dominick stopped to think when he got to the middle of the deer-park, for he had not made up his mind, when he left the house, and the whisky did not clear his head, only it gev him courage.
He did not feel the cowld wind now, nor fear death, nor think much of anything but the shame and fall of the old family.
And he made up his mind, if no better thought came to him between that and there, so soon as he came to Murroa Wood, he’d hang himself from one of the oak branches with his cravat.
It was a bright moonlight night, there was just a bit of a cloud driving across the moon now and then, but, only for that, as light a’most as day.
Down he goes, right for the wood of Murroa. It seemed to him every step he took was as long as three, and it was no time till he was among the big oak-trees with their roots spreading from one to another, and their branches stretching overhead like the timbers of a naked roof, and the moon shining down through them, and casting their shadows thick and twist abroad on the ground as black as my shoe.
He was sobering a bit by this time, and he slacked his pace, and he thought ’twould be better to list in the French king’s army, and thry what that might do for him, for he knew a man might take his own life any time, but it would puzzle him to take it back again when he liked.
Just as he made up his mind not to make away with himself, what should he hear but a step clinkin’ along the dry ground under the trees, and soon he sees a grand gentleman right before him comin’ up to meet him.
He was a handsome young man like himself, and he wore a cocked-hat with gold-lace round it, such as officers wears on their coats, and he had on a dress the same as French officers wore in them times.
He stopped opposite Sir Dominick, and he cum to a standstill also.
The two gentlemen took off their hats to one another, and says the stranger:
“I am recruiting, sir,” says he, “for my sovereign, and you’ll find my money won’t turn into pebbles, chips, and nutshells, by tomorrow.”
At the same time he pulls out a big purse full of gold.
The minute he set eyes on that gentleman, Sir Dominick had his own opinion of him; and at those words he felt the very hair standing up on his head.
“Don’t be afraid,” says he, “the money won’t burn you. If it proves honest gold, and if it prospers with you, I’m willing to make a bargain. This is the last day of February,” says he; “I’ll serve you seven years, and at the end of that time you shall serve me, and I’ll come for you when the seven years is over, when the clock turns the minute between February and March; and the first of March ye’ll come away with me, or never. You’ll not find me a bad master, any more than a bad servant. I love my own; and I command all the pleasures and the glory of the world. The bargain dates from this day, and the lease is out at midnight on the last day I told you; and in the year”—he told him the year, it was easy reckoned, but I forget it—“and if you’d rather wait,” he says, “for eight months and twenty eight days, before you sign the writin’, you may, if you meet me here. But I can’t do a great deal for you in the meantime; and if you don’t sign then, all you get from me, up to that time, will vanish away, and you’ll be just as you are tonight, and ready to hang yourself on the first tree you meet.”
Well, the end of it was, Sir Dominick chose to wait, and he came back to the house with a big bag full of money, as round as your hat a’most.
My grandfather was glad enough, you may be sure, to see the master safe and sound again so soon. Into the kitchen he bangs again, and swings the bag o’ money on the table; and he stands up straight, and heaves up his shoulders like a man that has just got shut of a load; and he looks at the bag, and my grandfather looks at him, and from him to it, and back again. Sir Dominick looked as white as a sheet, and says he:
“I don’t know, Con, what’s in it; it’s the heaviest load I ever carried.”
He seemed shy of openin’ the bag; and he made my grandfather heap up a roaring fire of turf and wood, and then, at last, he opens it, and, sure enough, ’twas stuffed full o’ golden guineas, bright and new, as if they were only that minute out o’ the Mint.
Sir Dominick made my grandfather sit at his elbow while he counted every guinea in the bag.
When he was done countin’, and it wasn’t far from daylight when that time came, Sir Dominick made my grandfather swear not to tell a word about it. And a close secret it was for
