The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1903-10-16

How he got through the night O'Neill
never knew The court martial in the
morning had taken little time. Its
sentence, a foregone conclusion,
promptly approved by the admiral,
had been death by hanging at half
after o'clock that night. He had re-
fused to give any further parole in the
faint hope that something might ena-
BILE him to escape, and consequently
had been heavily ironed and placed in
confinement in the space between two
of the great guns on the lower gun
deck-the Scraps was double banked
frigate-on the starboard side. The
forethought of Coventry, who had at
tended him with the solicitude and
kindness of a brother and had pleaded
for him unavailingly before the court,
had caused n canvas screen to be pro-
vided, which inclosed two of the guns
and allowed him TO pass his hours I'M
disturbed by the curious gaze of the
English seamen. An armed marine
stood always as sentry before the
screen.
Captain Pearson, gallant officer,
had been kindness itself in all his ar
rangements. but his orders, which were
peremptory, left him no discretion
whatever O'Neill passed his time sit
ting by the open port, leaning on
gun, gazing out over the water at the
gray old castle where he had found his
love and met his fate. Many tragedies
had been enacted within its walls dur
ing long centuries of history-none sad
der than his own.
1t would have been foolish to say
that he had no regrets. No one could
think of the possibilities of happiness
presented by such love as that which
he was now assured Elizabeth felt for
him without a sense of despair coming
over the mind in the knowledge they
were not to be enjoyed, but he was
sailor, and generations of heroic ances-
>ors had accustomed him to look death
in the face and smile undaunted at it's
harsh. forbidding appearance.
Fortune infortune, fortune" had
been the motto of this branch of the
redhanded O'Neills; at least that was
the punning Latin translation of Gel
tic original which meant Fortune and
misfortune are alike to the strong"
When his friends and acquaintance
ut the French court, those knights and
ladies with whom he had ruffied it so
bravely, the young king, his master.
his old comrades, the hard fighters on
tte Richard, her dauntless captain,
that brave old man, his father. heard
how he died, they would learn that he
had met the last grim enemy with the
wonted intrepidity of his race. No
blesse oblige; and then having made his
peace with God as best he could alone
he was of a different faith from that
Of the chaplain of the ship-he gave
himself over to mournful dreams of
Elizabeth Howard.
Late in the afternoon his meditations
were interrupted by the arrival or Gov
entry. The poignant unhappiness Of
the young Englishman was if anything
greater than that of O'Neill. His ell
gagement to Elizabeth Howard, with
whom he had grown up, had been at
first more or less a matter of conven-
fence, and he had never entirely real
lied the hold she had taken upon his
heart until he heard her in the arms of
O'NeiIl make that frantic avowal of
her overwhelming passion. Men fire.
quently do not know the value of what
they have until they lose 1t.
COventry's heart had been sur
charged with love and devotion to this
woman. and because his life had glided
on evenly he had not known how full
of love it was until he had been so
shaken that it had overfiowed He
would, he thought, cheerfully have