“My Norah, leave me; you may by chance be rudely handled in the scuffle.”
The terrified but faithful girl fell upon his breast.
“Connor, your fate is mine; hasten to your boat, if it be not yet too late.”
An iron-shod hunting pole was his only weapon; and using it with his right arm, while Norah hung upon his left, he sprang without further parley through an aperture in the wall, and made for the water. But his assailants were upon him, the M’Diarmod himself with upraised battle-axe at their head.
“Spare my father,” faltered Norah; and Connor, with a mercifully directed stroke, only dashed the weapon from the old man’s hand, and then, clearing a passage with a vigorous sweep, accompanied with the well-known charging cry, before which they had so often quailed, bounded through it to the water’s brink. An instant, and with her who was now more than his second self, he was once more in his little boat; but, alas! it was aground, and so quickly fell the blows against him, that he dare not adventure to shove it off. Letting Norah slip from his hold, she sank backwards to the bottom of the boat; and then, with both arms free, he redoubled his efforts, and after a short but furious struggle succeeded in getting the little skiff afloat. Maddened at the sight, the old chief rushed breast-deep into the water; but his right arm had been disabled by a casual blow, and his disheartened followers feared, under the circumstances, to come within range of that well-wielded club. But a crafty one among them had already seized on a safer and surer plan. He had clambered up an adjacent tree, armed with a heavy stone, and now stood on one of the branches above the devoted boat, and summoned him to yield, if he would not perish. The young chief’s renewed exertions were his only answer.
“Let him escape, and your head shall pay for it,” shouted the infuriated father.
The fellow hesitated. “My young mistress?”
“There are enough here to save her, if I will it. Down with the stone, or by the blood----”
He needed not to finish the sentence, for down at the word it came, striking helpless the youth’s right arm, and shivering the frail timber of the boat, which filled at once, and all went down. For an instant an arm re-appeared, feebly beating the water in vain--it was the young chief’s broken one: the other held his Norah in its embrace, as was seen by her white dress flaunting for a few moments on and above the troubled surface. The lake at this point was deep, and though there was a rush of the M’Diarmods towards it, yet in their confusion they were but awkward aids, and the fluttering ensign that marked the fatal spot had sunk before they reached it. The strength of Connor, disabled as he was by his broken limb, and trammelled by her from whom even the final struggle could not dissever him, had failed; and with her he loved locked in his last embrace, they were after a time recovered from the water, and laid side by side upon the bank, in all their touching, though, alas, lifeless beauty! Remorse reached the rugged hearts even of those who had so ruthlessly dealt by them; and as they looked on their goodly forms, thus cold and senseless by a common fate, the rudest felt that it would be an impious and unpardonable deed to do violence to their memory, by the separation of that union which death itself had sanctified. Thus were they laid in one grave; and, strange as it may appear, their fathers, crushed and subdued, exhausted even of resentment by the overwhelming stroke--for nothing can quell the stubborn spirit like the extremity of sorrow--crossed their arms in amity over their remains, and grief wrought the reconciliation which even centuries of time, that great pacificator, had failed to do.