conventional principles to their private resentments, and is, therefore, such a consequence as might naturally be expected to result from a combination of men who, in one sense, consider murder no crime.  Thus does this secret tyranny fall back upon society, as well as upon those who are concerned in it, as a double curse; and, indeed, we believe that even the greater number of these unhappy wretches whom it keeps within its toils, would be glad if the principle were rooted out of the country forever.

“An’ so you’re goin’ to put my father down on the black list,” said the beetle-browed son of the Rouser.  “Very well, Bartle, do so; but do you see that?” he added, pointing to the sign of the coffin and the cross-bones, which he had previously drawn upon the slate; “dhav a sphirit Neev, if you do, you’ll waken some mornin’ in a warmer counthry than Ireland.”

“Very well,” said Bartle, quietly, but evidently shrinking from a threat nearly as fearful, and far more daring than his own.  “You know I have nothin’ to do except my duty.  Yez are goin’ aginst the cause, an’ I must report yez; afther whatever happens, won’t come from me, nor from any one here.  It is from thim that’s in higher quarters you’ll get your doom, an’ not from me, or, as I said afore, from any one here.  Mark that; but indeed you know it as well as I do, an’ I believe, Rouser, a good deal bether.”

Flanagan’s argument, to men who understood its dreadful import, was one before which almost every description of personal courage must quail.  Persons were then present, Rouser Redhead among the rest, who had been sent upon some of those midnight missions, which contumacy against the system, when operating in its cruelty, had dictated.  Persons of humane disposition, declining to act on these sanguinary occasions, are generally the first to be sacrificed, for individual life is nothing when obstructing the propagation of general principle.

This truth, coming from Flanagan’s lips, they themselves, some of whom had executed its spirit, knew but too well.  The difference, however, between their apprehension, so far as they were individually concerned, was not much; Flanagan had the person to fear, and his opponents the principle.

Redhead, however, who knew that whatever he had executed upon delinquents like himself, might also upon himself be visited in his turn, saw that his safest plan for the present was to submit; for indeed the meshes of the White-boys’ system leave no man’s life safe, if he express hostile opinions to it.

“Bartle,” said he, “you know I’m no coward; an’ I grant that you’ve a long head at plannin’ anything you set about.  I don’t see, in the mane time, why, afther all, we should quarrel.  You know me, Bartle; an’ if anything happens me, it won’t be for nothin.  I say no more; but I say still that you throw the danger upon uz, and don’t—­”