Peg O My Heart | Page 8

throwin' yer life away, Frank O'Connell."
"I wouldn't be the first and I won't be the last"
"Nothing will move ye?" cried the priest.
"One thing only," replied the agitator.
"And what is that?"
"Death!" and O'Connell strode abruptly away.

CHAPTER II
THE PANORAMA OF A LOST YOUTH
As O'Connell hurried through the streets of the little village thoughts
surged madly through his brain. It was in this barren spot he was born
and passed his youth. Youth! A period of poverty and struggle: of
empty dreams and futile hopes. It passed before him now as a
panorama. There was the doctor's house where his father hurried the
night he was born. How often had his mother told him of that night of
storm when she gave her last gleam of strength in giving him life! In
storm he was born: in strife he would live. The mark was on him.
Now he came to the little schoolhouse where he first learned to read.
Facing it Father Cahill's tiny church, where he had learned to pray.
Beyond lay the green on which he had his first fight. It was about his
father. Bruised and bleeding, he crept home that day-- beaten. His

mother cried over him and washed his cuts and bathed his bruises. A
flush of shame crept across his face as he thought of that beating. The
result of our first battle stays with us through life. He watched his
conqueror, he remembered for years. He had but one ambition in those
days--to gain sufficient strength to wipe out that disgrace. He trained
his muscles, He ran on the roads at early morning until his breathing
was good. He made friends with an English soldier stationed in the
town, by doing him some slight service. The man had learned boxing in
London and could beat any one in his regiment. O'Connell asked the
man to teach him boxing. The soldier agreed. He found the boy an apt
pupil. O'Connell mastered the art of self-defence. He learned the
vulnerable points of attack. Then he waited his opportunity. One
half-holiday, when the schoolboys were playing on the green, he
walked up deliberately to his conqueror and challenged him to a return
engagement. The boys crowded around them. "Is it another batin' ye'd
be afther havin', ye beggar-man's son?" said the enemy.
O'Connell's reply was a well-timed punch on that youth's jaw, and the
second battle was on.
As O'Connell fought he remembered every blow of the first fight when,
weak and unskilful, he was an easy prey for his victor.
"That's for the one ye gave me two years ago, Martin Quinlan," cried
O'Connell, as he closed that youth's right eye, and stepped nimbly back
from a furious counter.
"And it's a bloody nose ye'll have, too," as he drove his left with deadly
precision on Quinlan's olfactory organ, staggering that amazed youth,
who, nothing daunted, ran into a series of jabs and swings that
completely dazed him and forced him to clinch to save further damage.
But the fighting blood of O'Connell was up. He beat Quinlan out of the
clinch with a well-timed upper-cut that put the youth upon his back on
the green,
"Now take back that 'beggar-man's' son!" shouted O'Connell.
"I'll not," from the grass.

"Then get up and be beaten," screamed O'Connell. The boys danced
around them. It was too good to be true. Quinlan had thrashed them all,
and here was the apparently weakest of them--white-faced
O'Connell--thrashing him. Why, if O'Connell could best him, they all
could. The reign of tyranny was over.
"Fight! Fight!" they shouted, as they crowded around the combatants.
Quinlan rose to his feet only to be put back again on the ground by a
straight right in the mouth. He felt the warm blood against his lips and
tasted the salt on his tongue. It maddened him. He staggered up and
rushed with all his force against O'Connell, who stepped aside and
caught Quinlan, as he stumbled past, full behind the ear. He pitched
forward on his face and did not move. The battle was over.
"And I'll serve just the same any that sez a word against me father!"
Not a boy said a word.
"Fighting O'Connell" he was nicknamed that day, and "Fighting
O'Connell" he was known years afterwards to Dublin Castle.
When he showed his mother his bruised knuckles that night and told
her how he came by them, she cried again as she did two years before.
Only this time they were tears of pride.
From door to door he went.
"St. Kernan's Hill at three," was all he said. Some nodded, some said
nothing, others agreed volubly. On all their faces he read that they
would be there.
On through the village he went until