We spoke of Lady Louisa, and of the watch of Waterloo.  “That watch had a wonderful escape a few years ago,” said Mr. Seigne.

Lady Louisa, it seems, had a confidential butler whom she most implicitly trusted.  One day it was found that a burglary had apparently been committed at Woodstock, and that with a quantity of jewelry the priceless watch had vanished.  The butler was very active about the matter, and as no trace could be found leading out of the house, he intimated a suspicion that the affair might possibly have some connection with a guest not long before at the house.  This angered Lady Louisa, who thereupon consulted the agent, who employed a capable detective from Dublin.  The detective came down to Inistiogue as a commercial traveller, wandered about, made the acquaintance of Lady Louisa’s maid, of the butler, and of other people about the house, and formed his own conclusions.  Two or three days after his arrival he walked into the shop of a small jeweller in a neighbouring town, and affecting a confidential manner, told the jeweller he wanted to buy “some of those things from Woodstock.”  The man was taken by surprise, and going into a backshop produced one very fine diamond, and a number of pieces of silver plate, of the disappearance of which the butler had said nothing to his mistress.  This led to the arrest of the butler, and to the discovery that for a long time he had been purloining property from the house and selling it.  Many cases of excellent claret had found their way in this fashion to a public-house which had acquired quite a reputation for its Bordeaux with the officers quartered in its neighbourhood.  The wine-bins at Woodstock were found full of bottles of water.  Much of the capital port left by Colonel Tighe had gone—­but the hock was untouched.  “Probably the butler didn’t care for hock,” said Mr. Seigne.  The Waterloo watch was recovered from a very decent fellow, a travelling dealer, to whom it had been sold:  and many pieces of jewelry were traced up to London.  But Lady Louisa could not be induced to go up to London to identify them or testify.

DUBLIN, Tuesday, March 6.—­It is a curious fact, which I learned to-day from the Registrar-General, that the deposits in the Post-office Savings Banks have never diminished in Ireland since these banks were established.[21] These deposits are chiefly made, I understand, by the small tenants, who are less represented by the deposits in the General Savings Banks than are the shopkeepers and the cattle-drovers.  In the General Savings Banks the deposit line fluctuates more; though on the whole there has been a steady increase in these deposits also throughout Ireland.