CHAPTER LXXVI.
RELATING HOW THE CASTLE WAS TAKEN, AND HOW MISTRESS MOGGY TOOK HEART OF
GRACE.
That evening there came to the door of the Mills, a damsel, with a wide
basket on her arm, the covering of which being removed, a goodly show of
laces, caps, fans, wash-balls, buckles, and other attractions, came out
like a parterre of flowers, with such a glow as dazzled the eyes of
Moggy, at the study window.
'Would you plaze to want any, my lady?' enquired the pedlar.
Moggy thought they were, perhaps, a little bit too fine for her purse, but she could not forbear longing and looking, and asking the prices of this bit of finery and that, at the window; and she called Betty, and the two maids conned over the whole contents of the basket.
At last she made an offer for an irresistible stay-hook of pinchbeck, set with half-a-dozen resplendent jewels of cut glass, and after considerable chaffering, and a keen encounter of their wits, they came at last to terms, and Moggy ran out to the kitchen for her money, which lay in a brass snuff-box, in a pewter goblet, on the dresser.
As she was counting her coin, and putting back what she did not want, the latch of the kitchen door was lifted from without, and the door itself pushed and shaken. Though the last red gleam of a stormy sunset was glittering among the ivy leaves round the kitchen window, the terrors of last night's apparition were revived in a moment, and, with a blanched face, she gazed on the door, expecting, breathlessly, what would come.
The door was bolted and locked on the inside, in accordance with Doctor
Toole's solemn injunction; and there was no attempt to use violence. But
a brisk knocking began thereat and Moggy, encouraged by hearing the
voices of Betty and the vender of splendours at the little parlour
window, and also by the amber sunlight on the rustling ivy leaves, and
the loud evening gossip of the sparrows, took heart of grace, and
demanded shrilly—
'Who's there?'
A whining beggar's voice asked admission.
'But you can't come in, for the house is shut up for the night, replied
the cook.
'Tis a quare hour you lock your doors at,' said the besieger.
'Mighty quare, but so it is,' she answered.
'But 'tis a message for the misthress I have,' answered the applicant.
'Who from?' demanded the porteress.
'Tis a present o' some wine, acushla.'
'Who from?' repeated she, growing more uneasy.
'Auch! woman, are you going to take it in, or no?'
'Come in the morning, my good man,' said she, 'for sorrow a foot you'll
put inside the house to-night.'
'An' that's what I'm to tell them that sent me.'
'Neither more nor less,' replied she.
And so she heard a heavy foot clank along the pavement, and she tried to
catch a glimpse of the returning figure, but she could not, though she
laid her cheek against the window-pane. However, she heard him whistling
as he went, which gave her a better opinion of him, and she thought she
heard the road gate shut after him.
So feeling relieved, and with a great sigh, she counted her money over; and answering Betty's shrill summons to the study, as the woman was in haste, with a 'Coming, coming this minute,' she replaced her treasure, and got swiftly into poor Charles Nutter's little chamber. There was his pipe over the chimney, and his green, and gold-laced Sunday waistcoat folded on the little walnut table by the fire, and his small folio, 'Maison Rustique, the Country Farme,' with his old green worsted purse set for a marker in it where he had left off reading the night before all their troubles began; and his silk dressing-gown was hanging by the window-frame, and his velvet morning-cap on the same peg—the dust had settled on them now. And after her fright in the kitchen, all these mementoes smote her with a grim sort of reproach and menace, and she wished the window barred, and the door of the ominous little chamber locked for the night.
'Tis growing late,' said the dealer from without, 'and I daren't be on
the road after dark. Gi' me my money, good girl; and here, take your
stay-hook.'
And so saying, she looked a little puzzled up and down, as not well
knowing how they were to make their exchange.
'Here,' says Moggy, 'give it in here.' And removing the fastening, she
shoved the window up a little bit. 'Hould it, Betty; hould it up,' said
she. And in came the woman's hard, brown hand, palm open, for her money, and the other containing the jewel, after which the vain soul of Moggy lusted.
