“Let her stay awhile:  it will be better for both.  Don’t put him in the prison-room, Graham.  Keep them by themselves for a while.  We will come for her by and by.”  And then, before them all, he held forth his hand and gave Clancy’s a cordial grasp: 

“Cheer up, man.  You’ve taken the right step at last.  You are a free man to-day, even if you are a prisoner for the time being.  Better this a thousand times than what you were.”

Hayne, too, spoke a few kind words in a low tone, and gave the old soldier his hand at parting.  Then the guard closed the door, and father and daughter were left alone.  As the groups around the guard-house began to break up and move away, and the officers, re-entering the carriages, drove over to head-quarters, a rollicking Irishman called to the sergeant of the guard,—­

“Does he know the ould woman’s skipped, sargent?  Shure you’d better tell him.  ’Twill cheer him, like.”

But when, a few moments after, the news was imparted to Clancy, the effect was electric and startling.  With one bound and a savage cry he sprang to the door.  The sergeant threw himself upon him and strove to hold him back, but was no match for the frenzied man.  Deaf to Kate’s entreaties and the sergeant’s commands, he hurled him aside, leaped through the door-way, shot like a deer past the lolling guardsmen on the porch, and, turning sharply, went at the top of his speed down the hill towards Sudsville before man could lay hand on him.  The sentry on Number One cocked his rifle and looked inquiringly at the officer of the guard, who came running out.  With a wild shriek little Kate threw herself upon the sentry, clasping his knees and imploring him not to shoot.  The lieutenant and the sergeant both shouted, “Never mind!  Don’t fire!” and with others of the guard rushed in pursuit.  But, old and feeble as he was, poor Clancy kept the lead, never swerving, never flagging, until he reached the door-way of his abandoned cot; this he burst in, threw himself upon his knees by the bedside, and dragged to light a little wooden chest that stood by an open trap in the floor.  One look sufficed:  the mere fact that the trap was open and the box exposed was enough.  With a wild cry of rage, despair, and baffled hatred, he clinched his hands above his head, rose to his full height, and with a curse upon his white lips, with glaring eyes and gasping breath, turned upon his pursuers as they came running in, and hurled his fists at the foremost.  “Let me follow her, I say!  She’s gone with it all,—­his money!  Let me go!” he shrieked; and then his eyes turned stony, a gasp, a clutch at his throat, and, plunging headlong, he fell upon his face at their feet.

Poor little Kate!  The old man was, indeed, free at last.

XVIII.