第127章

At Queenstown Ffrench bought a paper and looked over it while the tender was carrying him, in company with many a weeping emigrant, to the great steamer out in the bay.From time to time the journals still contained references to the subject which was uppermost in Gerald's thoughts.The familiar words, "The Drim Churchyard Mystery," caught his eye, and he read a brief paragraph, which had nothing to say except that all investigations had failed to throw any light on the strange business.

"Ay, and will fail," he mused, as the tender came alongside the steamer; "at any rate, if anything is found out it won't be by me, for I shall be in California, and I can scarcely run across any clues there."And yet, as Gerald paced the deck, and watched the bleak shores of Cork fading in the distance, his thoughts were full of the banished Costellos, and he wondered with what eyes those exiles had looked their last on the Old Head of Kinsale a quarter of a millennium ago.Those fierce old chieftains, to whom the Ffrenches--proud county family as they esteemed themselves--were but as mushrooms;what lives had they lived, what deaths had they died, and how came their haughty cognizance, so well expressing its defiant motto, on the handkerchief of the nameless stranger who slept in Drim churchyard--Drim, the old, old graveyard; Drim, that had been fenced in as God's acre in the days of the Costellos themselves?

Was it mere chance that had selected this spot as the last resting-place of one who bore the arms of the race? Was it possible the girl had shared the Costello blood?

Gerald glanced over his letter from the Heralds' College and shook his head.The family had been extinct for more than sixty years.

About two months after Gerald's return to California a despatch was received from the Evening Mail's regular correspondent in Marysville, relating the particulars of an encounter between the Mexican holders of a large ranch in Yuba County and certain American land-grabbers who had set up a claim to a portion of the estate.The matter was in course of adjudication in the Marysville courts, but the claimants, impatient at the slow process of the law, had endeavored to seize the disputed land by force.Shots had been fired, blood had been spilled, and the whole affair added nothing to Yuba County's reputation for law and order.The matter created some talk in San Francisco, and the Evening Mail, among other papers, expressed its opinion in one of those trenchant personal articles which are the spice of Western journalism.Two or three days later, when the incident had been almost forgotten in the office, the city editor sent for Gerald Ffrench.

"Ffrench," said that gentleman, as the young man approached his desk, "I've just received a letter from Don Miguel y--y--something or other.I can't read his whole name, and it don't matter much.

It's Vincenza, you know, the owner of that ranch where they had the shooting scrape the other day.He is anxious to make a statement of the matter for publication, and has come down to the Bay on purpose.Suppose you go and see what he has to say? He's staying at the Lick."The same morning Gerald sent up his card and was ushered into the apartment of Don Miguel Vincenza at the Lick House.

The senor was a young man, not much older than Gerald himself.He had the appearance and manners of a gentleman, as Ffrench quickly discovered, and he spoke fluent, well-chosen English with scarcely a trace of accent, a circumstance for which the interviewer felt he could not be sufficiently grateful.

"Ah, you are from the Evening Mail," said the young Spaniard, rising as Gerald entered; "most kind of you to come, and to come so promptly.Won't you be seated? Try a cigar.No? You'll excuse me if I light a cigarette.I want to make myself clear, and I'm always clearest when I'm in a cloud." He gave a little laugh, and with one twirl of his slender fingers he converted a morsel of tissue paper and a pinch of tobacco into a compact roll, which he lighted, and exhausted in half-a-dozen puffs as he spoke.

"This man, this Jenkinson's claim is perfectly preposterous," he began, "but I won't go into that.The matter is before the courts.

What I want to give you is a true statement of that unfortunate affair at the ranch, with which, I beg you to believe, I had nothing whatever to do."Senor Vincenza's tale might have had the merit of truth; it certainly lacked that of brevity.He talked on, rolling a fresh cigarette at every second sentence, and Gerald made notes of such points as he considered important, but at the conclusion of the Spaniard's statement the journalist could not see that it had differed much from the published accounts, and he told the other as much.

"Well, you see," said Vincenza, "I am in a delicate position.It is not as if I were acting for myself.I am only my sister's agent--my half-sister's, I should say--poor little Catalina;" and the speaker broke off with a sigh and rolled a fresh cigarette before he resumed.

"It's her property, all of it, and I cannot bear to have her misrepresented in any way.""I understand," said Gerald, making a note of the fact."The property, I suppose, passed to your sister from--""From her father.I was in the land of the living some years before he met and wooed and won my widowed mother.They are both dead now, and Catalina has none but myself to look out for her, except distant relatives on the father's side, who will inherit the property if she dies unmarried, and whom she cordially detests."Gerald was not particularly romantic, but the idea of this fair young Spaniard, owner of one of the finest ranches in Yuba County, unmarried, and handsome too, if she were anything like her mother, inflamed his imagination a little.He shook hands cordially with the young man as he rose to go, and could not help wishing they were better acquainted.