In person he was a large and powerfully built man, considerably above six feet in height, and possessing great activity, combined with powers of enduring fatigue almost incredible.  With an eye like a hawk, and a heart that never knew fear, he was the person, of all others, calculated to strike terror into the minds of the country people.  The reckless daring with which he threw himself into danger—­the almost impetuous quickness with which he followed up a scent, whenever information reached him of an important character—­had their full effect upon a people who, long accustomed to the slowness and the uncertainty of the law were almost paralyzed at beholding detection and punishment follow on crime, as certainly as the thunder-crash follows the lightning.

His great instrument for this purpose was the obtaining information from sworn members of the secret societies, and whose names never appeared in the course of a trial or a prosecution, until the measure of their iniquity was completed, when they usually received a couple of hundred pounds, blood-money, as it was called, with which they took themselves away to America or Australia—­their lives being only secured while they remained, by the shelter afforded them in the magistrate’s own house.  And so it happened that, constantly there numbered from ten to twelve of these wretches, inmates of his family, each of whom had the burden of participation in one murder at least, waiting for an opportunity to leave the country, unnoticed and unwatched.

Such a frightful and unnatural state of things, can hardly be conceived; and yet, shocking as it was, it was a relief to that which led to it.  I have dwelt, perhaps too long upon this painful subject; but let my reader now accompany me a little farther, and the scene shall be changed.  Does he see that long, low, white house, with a tall, steep roof, perforated with innumerable narrow windows.  There are a few straggling beech trees, upon a low, bleak-looking field before the house, which is called, par excellence, the lawn; a pig or two, some geese, and a tethered goat are, here and there musing over the state of Ireland, while some rosy curly-headed noisy and bare-legged urchins are gamboling before the door.  This is the dwelling of the worshipful justice, to which myself and my party were now approaching, with that degree of activity which attends on most marches of twenty miles, under the oppressive closeness of a day in autumn.  Fatigued and tired as I was, yet I could not enter the little enclosure before the house, without stopping for a moment to admire the view before me.  A large tract of rich country, undulating on every side, and teeming with corn fields, in all the yellow gold of ripeness; here and there, almost hid by small clumps of ash and alder, were scattered some cottages, from which the blue smoke rose in a curling column into the calm evening’s sky.  All was graceful, and beautifully tranquil; and you might have selected the picture as emblematic of that happiness and repose we so constantly associate with our ideas of the country; and yet, before that sun had even set, which now gilded the landscape, its glories would be replaced by the lurid glare of nightly incendiarism, and—­but here, fortunately for my reader, and perhaps myself, I am interrupted in my meditations by a rich, mellifluous accent saying, in the true Doric of the south—­