Read Hungry Hill for Free Online Page B

Clonmere immediately.
    “I shall send word to London to Henry and John to join me,” he said, “if they can see their way to do so. I have little doubt who is at the bottom of the trouble.”
    “You mean Morty Donovan?” said Barbara, after a moment’s hesitation.
    “He may not take part in the actual plunder, in fact I think he is too shrewd a man to do so,” replied her father, “but if he is not the brains behind it I shall be extremely astonished.”
    “Who do you suppose wrote the anonymous letter?” asked Eliza.
    “I neither know nor care,” said John Brodrick. “Possibly one of my tenants who is too scared of Morty Donovan to declare himself.
    At any rate, the writer of the letter does not matter. What matters is that the men responsible should be tracked and punished, and this I am determined to do, if I risk my own head being broken in consequence.”
    His daughters looked at each other in distress.
    “I implore you,” said Barbara, “not to do anything rash. Could you not get assistance from the garrison on the Island?”
    “Dear child,” returned her father, “if I cannot quell one or two of my own country-people who have fallen into mischief without engaging the military to take up the matter for me, I should never be able to hold up my head in Doonhaven again. Your great-grandfather did not ask for help when he put down the smuggling seventy-five years ago.”
    “No,” said Jane, “but he got shot in the back for doing it.”
    John Brodrick looked at his youngest daughter with severity.
    “I suppose your brother John has been talking to you,” he said.
    Jane shook her head, her eyes filling with tears, and suddenly she got up from her chair at the breakfast-table and ran round to her father, putting her arms about him.
    “If you go home,” she said, “please let me come with you. I’m not afraid of the Donovans or anybody, and you will need someone to look after you and see that the house is in order. I’m not a child any longer, I’m nearly fourteen.”
    John Brodrick smiled at her, and patted her cheek.
    “D’y think Copper John cannot take care of himself?” he said. “Don’t look embarrassed, Eliza, at your end of the table. I know very well what I am called in Doonhaven. So, Jane child, you would look after me, and see that those lazy servants have the water heated, and the dinner served on clean plates, and the linen on my bed not wringing wet?
    Well, you must ask Barbara her opinion; it is not within my province. But whatever is decided, I leave here tomorrow for Bronsea in order to embark in the ship that sails for Slane in the evening.”
    A letter was dispatched to London informing Henry and John of their father’s return to Doonhaven, and asking them to join him at Clonmere if they could conveniently do so, and the following day John Brodrick and Jane, accompanied by old Martha, embarked on board the steam-packet that plied regularly between Bronsea and Slane. John Brodrick took the opportunity while in Slane, where they were obliged to put up for the night, to see if he could glean any information there about the illegal sale of copper, and if it was known who had the handling of it.
    The manager of the shipping-office was interested and sympathetic,, but hardly helpful. He admitted that he had heard of an underground market in the county and that there were always unscrupulous agents who were prepared to handle the stuff and have it shipped across the water to the smelting companies, but who the agents were, and what shipping firms were concerned, he was not prepared to say.
    John Brodrick left the shipping-office in a spirit of grim determination. Matters were even worse than he had expected. He had been away exactly three months, and in that space of time a system of plunder had developed that bade fair to put an end to the mining business altogether. He blamed Captain Nicholson for not having made him aware sooner of what was going on, and Ned Brodrick too.
    The