Along The Road We Drove, Until From An Eminence We Could See Lough Mask
In Its Beauty, With Its Bays And Islands Spread Out Beneath Us.
This
view gave us a part of the Lough where the water covers the stones.
This
particular evening the water was as calm as a mirror and as blue as the
sky above it, and the trees on the hills and bays around it in their
greenness and leafiness, round-headed and massive, were all bathed in
sunlight. We came to fields a little more barren-looking, where bare
stone fences took the place of the rich hedgerows, turned up a road that
lay between these stony ramparts, and drove along for a little time.
I was wondering in my own mind about Captain Boycott. Did he, in his own
consciousness, think he was doing right in his system of fines? He knew
how small and miserable the wages were: he knew of the poor, comfortless
homes and the "smidrie o' wee duddy weans" that depended on the poor
pennies the father brought home; he knew that he came out well fed and
leisurely to find fault with a peasant who was working with a sense of
goneness about the stomach. Did he think that increasing the hunger pain
would make him more thoughtful, more orderly? Would he have done better
if he had been suddenly brought to change places with his serf? If he
could not help fining the people until he fined off the most of their
wages, were they to blame for refusing to work for him? Was the
Government right in taking his part when it had neither eye nor ear for
his people's complaint? I was questioning with myself in this helpless
fashion, when I heard my driver inquire in Irish of a bare-footed
country girl if we were near the spot where Lord Mountmorris was
murdered.
This question, and the surprise with which I became aware that I
understood it, made me forget Captain Boycott for the time being and
wake up to the present time. We had stopped our car and were waiting on
the girl's answer, which she seemed in no hurry to give. At length
lifting a small stone she threw it on the road a car's length behind us,
answering in Irish that there was the spot where he was found. The
murderer was hidden in the field opposite. The road was bare of the
shelter of hedge or ditch, bush or tree. It was late; he was coming home
alone, his police escort for some reason were not with him that
particular night. Lord Mountmorris was murdered, and some one has a mark
on his hand that all the water of the Lough will not wash off.
We drove along the road, a bleak and bare road, with a hill on one side
of it and a steep slope down on the other, until we came to a small
plantation, a lodge gate, and drove up an avenue with small plantations
of young trees here and there, some grass lands, a few beasts grazing
about, some signs of where flower beds and flower borders had been
better cared for once on a time than now, and came to a comfortable,
roomy square house finished in plaster.
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