From this moment the mystery of the new aristocracy began to fade away, and get itself abolished. Men and women began to feel that there might be something worse in store for them than the old course of policemen, juries, and judges. It had seemed, at first, as though these evil things could be brought to an end, and silenced altogether as far as their blessed country was concerned. A time was coming in which everyone was to do as he pleased, without any fear that another should tell of him. Though a man should be seen in the broad daylight cutting the tails off half a score of oxen it would be recognised in the neighbourhood as no more than a fair act of vengeance, and nothing should be told of the deed, let the policemen busy themselves as they might. And the beauty of the system consisted in the fact that the fear of telling was brought home to the minds of all men, women, and children. Though it was certain that a woman had seen a cow\'s tail mangled, though it could be proved beyond all doubt that she was in the field when the deed was done, yet if she held her peace no punishment would await her. The policeman and the magistrate could do nothing to her. But Thady O\'Leary, the man who had cut a cow\'s tail off, could certainly punish her. If nothing else were done she could be boycotted, or, in other words, not allowed to buy or sell the necessaries of life. Or she could herself be murdered, as had happened to Pat Gilligan. The whole thing had seemed to run so smoothly!

But now there had come, or would soon come, a change o\'er the spirit of the dream. The murder of Pat Gilligan, though it had made one in the necessary sequence of events, one act in the course of the drama which, as a whole, had appeared to be so perfect, seemed to them all to have about it something terrible. No one knew what offence Pat Gilligan had given, or why he had been condemned. Each man began to tremble as he thought that he too might be a Pat Gilligan, and each woman that she might be a Mrs. Kelly. It was better to go back to the police and the magistrates than this!

I do not know that we need lean too heavily on the stupidity of the country\'s side in not having perceived that this would be so. The country\'s side is very slow in perceiving the course which things will take. These ten murderers had been brought together, each from fear of the others; and they must have felt that though they were ten,—a number so great when they considered the employment on which they were engaged as to cause horror to the minds of all of them,—the ten could not include all who should have been included. Had the other three been taken in, if that were possible, how much better it would have been! But the desire for murder had not gone so far,—its beauty had not been so perfectly acknowledged as to make it even yet possible to comprise a whole parish in destroying one family.

Then the three had seen that the whole scheme, the mystery of the thing, the very plan upon which it was founded, must be broken down and thrown to the winds. And we can imagine that, when the idea first came upon the minds of those three, that the entire family of the Kellys was to be sacrificed to stop the tongue of one talkative old woman, a horror must have fallen upon them as they recognised the duty which was incumbent on them. The duty of saving those six unfortunates they did not recognise. They could not screw themselves up to the necessary pitch of courage to enable them to enter in among loaded pistols and black-visaged murderers. The two women and the children had to die, though the three men were so close to them; so close as to have been certainly able to save them, or some of them, had they rushed into the cabin and created the confusion of another advent. To this they could not bring themselves, for are not the murderers armed? But an awful horror must have crept round their minds as they thought of the self-imposed task they had undertaken. They waited until the murders had been completed, and then they went back home and told the police.

From this moment the mystery by which murders in County Galway and elsewhere were for a short period protected was over in Ireland. Men have not seen, as yet, how much more lovely it is to tell frankly all that has been done, to give openly such evidence as a man may have to police magistrates and justices of the peace, than to keep anything wrapped within his own bosom. The charm of such outspoken truth does not reconcile itself at once to the untrained mind; but the fact of the loveliness does gradually creep in, and the hideous ugliness of the other venture. On the minds of those men of Kerrycullion something of the ugliness and something of the loveliness must have made itself apparent. And when this had been done it was not probable that a return to the utter ugliness of the lie should be possible. Whether the ten be hanged,—to the intense satisfaction of Hunter and his master,—or some fewer number, such as may suffice the mitigated desire for revenge which at present is burning in the breasts of men, the thing will have been done, and the mystery with all its beauty will have passed away.

At Castle Morony the beginning of the passing away of the mystery was hailed with great delight. It took place in this wise. A little girl who had been brought up there in the kitchen, and had reached the age of fifteen under the eyes of Ada and Edith,—a slip of a girl, whose feet our two girls had begun to trammel with shoes and stockings, and who was old enough to be proud of the finery though she could not bear the confinement,—had gone under the system of boycotting, when all the other servants had gone also. Peter, who was very stern in his discipline to the younger people, had caught hold of her before she went, and had brought her to Mr. Jones, recommending that at any rate her dress should be stripped from her back, and her shoes and stockings from her feet. "If you war to wallop her, sir, into the bargain, it would be a good deed done," Peter had said to his master.

"Why should I wallop her for leaving my service?"

"She ain\'t guv\' no notice," said the indignant Peter.

"And if I were to wallop you because you had taken it into your stupid head to leave me at a moment\'s notice, should I be justified in doing so?"

"There is differences," said Peter, drawing himself up.

"You are stronger, you mean, and Feemy Carroll is weak. Let her go her own gait as she pleases. How am I to take upon myself to say that she is not right to go? And for the shoes and stockings, let them go with her, and the dress also, if I am supposed to have any property in it. Fancy a Landleaguer in Parliament asking an indignant question as to my detaining forcibly an unwilling female servant. Let them all go; the sooner we learn to serve ourselves the better for us. I suppose you will go too before long."

This had been u............