any of their criminal behests.  If, then, the unfortunate individual pitched upon for the performance of this extraordinary office refused to discharge it, he was probably shot by the Threshers or Carders, and if he carried their wishes into effect, he was liable to be hanged by the government, so that his option lay between the relative comforts of being hanged or shot—­a rather anomalous state of society, by the way.

The vengeance of the people against Purcel and his sons had now risen or was fast rising, to its height.  This intrepid man and these resolute young men, aided by the writs of rebellion and the executive authorities, had nerved themselves up to the collection of tithe, through a spirit that was akin to vengeance.  In fact, they felt an inhuman delight—­at least the father and his eldest son did—­in levying the execution of the writs in the most pitiless and oppressive manner.  They themselves provided horses and carts, and under protection of the military and police—­for both were now necessary—­they swept off cattle, crops, and furniture, at a ruinous value to the defaulters.  At length they proceeded to the house of a struggling widow, whose only son, exasperated at the ruin which their proceedings had wrought upon his mother, in an unguarded moment, induced a few thoughtless boys like himself to resist the law.  It was an act of folly for which his life paid the penalty.  He was shot dead on the spot, and his death proved the signal for raising the gloomy curtain that veils the last of the drama in which the tithe-proctor makes his appearance.

Soon after the death of this youth, John Parcel had occasion to go to Dublin, to transact some business with the Rev. Dr. Turbot, and on his way to the metropolis he was obliged to stop for more than an hour at the county town, to await the arrival of the mail-coach.  As he lingered about the door of the coach-office, he noticed a crowd of persons corning down the street, bearing something that resembled a human figure on a beir.  It was evidently the corpse of some person, but at the same time he felt it could not have been a funeral, inasmuch as he saw that it came from the churchyard instead of going to it.  The body was covered with a mort-cloth, so that he could not ascertain whether it was that of a man or a woman.  Walking at its head as a chief mourner does at a funeral, was an old man with gray hair, who appeared to have every feature of his venerable countenance impressed with the character of an affliction which no language could express.  He neither spoke nor looked to either side of him, but walked onward in a stupor of grief that was evidently too deep for tears—­for he shed none, his face was pale even unto ghastliness, whilst at the same time there was a darkness over it, which evidently proceeded from the gloom of a broken down and hopeless heart.