When the eight months and twenty-eight days were pretty near spent and ended, Sir Dominick returned to the house here with a troubled mind, in doubt what was best to be done, and no one alive but my grandfather knew anything about the matter, and he not half what had happened.
As the day drew near, towards the end of October, Sir Dominick grew only more and more troubled in mind.
One time he made up his mind to have no more to say to such things, nor to speak again with the like of them he met with in the wood of Murroa. Then, again, his heart failed him when he thought of his debts, and he not knowing where to turn. Then, only a week before the day, everything began to go wrong with him. One man wrote from London to say that Sir Dominick paid three thousand pounds to the wrong man, and must pay it over again; another demanded a debt he never heard of before; and another, in Dublin, denied the payment of a thundherin’ big bill, and Sir Dominick could nowhere find the receipt, and so on, wid fifty other things as bad.
Well, by the time the night of the 28th of October came round, he was a’most ready to lose his senses with all the demands that was risin’ up again him on all sides, and nothing to meet them but the help of the one dhreadful friend he had to depind on at night in the oak-wood down there below.
So there was nothing for it but to go through with the business that was begun already, and about the same hour as he went last, he takes off the little crucifix he wore round his neck, for he was a Catholic, and his gospel, and his bit o’ the thrue cross that he had in a locket, for since he took the money from the Evil One he was growin’ frightful in himself, and got all he could to guard him from the power of the devil. But tonight, for his life, he daren’t take them with him. So he gives them into my grandfather’s hands without a word, only he looked as white as a sheet o’ paper; and he takes his hat and sword, and telling my grandfather to watch for him, away he goes, to try what would come of it.
It was a fine still night, and the moon—not so bright, though, now as the first time—was shinin’ over heath and rock, and down on the lonesome oak-wood below him.
His heart beat thick as he drew near it. There was not a sound, not even the distant bark of a dog from the village behind him. There was not a lonesomer spot in the country round, and if it wasn’t for his debts and losses that was drivin’ him on half mad, in spite of his fears for his soul and his hopes of paradise, and all his good angel was whisperin’ in his ear, he would a’ turned back, and sent for his clargy, and made his confession and his penance, and changed his ways, and led a good life, for he was frightened enough to have done a great dale.
Softer and slower he stepped as he got, once more, in undher the big branches of the oak-threes; and when he got in a bit, near where he met with the bad spirit before, he stopped and looked round him, and felt himself, every bit, turning as cowld as a dead man, and you may be sure he did not feel much betther when he seen the same man steppin’ from behind the big tree that was touchin’ his elbow a’most.
“You found the money good,” says he, “but it was not enough. No matter, you shall have enough and to spare. I’ll see after your luck, and I’ll give you a hint whenever it can serve you; and any time you want to see me you have only to come down here, and call my face to mind, and wish me present. You shan’t owe a shilling by the end of the year, and you shall never miss the right card, the best throw, and the winning horse. Are you willing?”
The young gentleman’s voice almost stuck in his throat, and his hair was rising on his head, but he did get out a word or two to signify that he consented; and with that the Evil One handed him a needle, and bid him give him three drops of blood from his arm; and he took them in the cup of an acorn, and gave him a pen, and bid him write some words that he repeated, and that Sir Dominick did not understand, on two thin slips of parchment. He took one himself and the other he sunk in Sir Dominick’s arm at the place where he drew the blood, and he closed the flesh over it. And that’s as true as you’re sittin’ there!
Well, Sir Dominick went home. He was a frightened man, and well he might be. But in a little time he began to grow aisier in his mind. Anyhow, he got out of debt very quick, and money came tumbling in to make him richer, and everything he took in hand prospered, and he never made a wager, or played a game, but he won; and for all that, there was not a poor man on the estate that was not happier than Sir Dominick.
So he took again to his old ways; for, when the money came back, all came back, and there were hounds and horses, and wine galore, and no end of company, and grand doin’s, and divarsion, up here at the great house. And some said Sir Dominick was thinkin’ of gettin’ married; and more said he wasn’t. But, anyhow, there was somethin’ troublin’ him more than common, and so one night, unknownst to all, away he goes to
