uv way.”  The mystery was soon cleared up by the appearance on the ground of Messrs. Van Stingey, Lofin, & Whinny, with fifteen constables, who laid an injunction on all the shanties, and quietly, revolver in hand, drove off the three hundred horses to the county town, to secure those contractors in their pay for the debt into which they brought all those men whom they got to deal in their store, or who had any property.  This is the way thousands of men were deceived, betrayed, and robbed of all they possessed in the wide world.  And this is the way in which Messrs. Van Stingey, Timens, Kitchins, Whinny, & Lofin supplied themselves with horses, carts, shanties, and all other necessaries for carrying on the work according to agreement.  The plan had so far succeeded; the only question now was, how to deprive these poor men of all legal redress, and have them exterminated from the neighborhood.  This was not difficult to effect with poor men who were half starved, and who had to look out for work somewhere else for the support of their families.  Those men who had the means left had quitted this cursed ground already, and Mr. P. Lofin struck on an expedient by which others, the more bold, were soon compelled to follow them.  He proceeded some eighty or a hundred miles into the State of Massachusetts, where he represented to several hundred men from the part of Ireland to which himself belonged, which was Connaught, that several of their countrymen were driven off and ill treated by Munster men and far-downs, and that now they had not only a chance of defending the honor of the province, but, by driving off their far-up and far-down enemies, they could have a year’s job, and a dollar a day.

This was enough; one thousand men immediately started for the scene of action, breathing vengeance against their fellow-countrymen, and determined on establishing the “anshint ghilory of Connaught.”  Every unfortunate Munster or Ulster man they met on their route was knocked down, and left senseless on the road; and shouts of victory were heard, and shots were fired, in anticipation of the triumph that awaited them.  Lofin, the head mover in all these disgraceful scenes, now drove off to the capital of the state; and—­will it be believed?—­this vile, low wretch, who could neither read nor write, succeeded in getting the loan of one thousand muskets out of the state arsenal to enable him to carry out his murderous and swindling scheme!  A few days previous to this, Lofin got some few boards on his work set fire to, in order to have a case made out for the authorities, and by this means, and through the influence of political wirepullers, he succeeded in getting the arms of the state placed in the hands of his ignorant dupes, for the murder of their plundered countrymen.  During these troublesome times, the house of Father Ugo, the priest of these parts, was literally besieged with weeping women and enraged men, stating their grievances, and asking for advice and counsel; for they had no other friend.