eepers could do no business, so with bated breath and
whispering humbleness they returned to Mr. Smith-Barry. The mart was
declared illegal, and the old one was re-opened. But while the
agitation continued, the town was possessed by devils. Terrorism and
outrage abounded on every side. The local papers published the names
of men who dared to avow esteem for Mr. Smith-Barry, or who were
supposed to favour his cause. The Tipperary boys threw bombshells into
their houses, pigeon-holed their windows with stones, threw blasts of
gun-powder with burning fuses into their homes. They were pitilessly
boycotted, and a regular system of spies watched their goings out and
their comings in. If they were shopkeepers everything was done to
injure them, and people who patronised them were not only placed on
the Black List but were assaulted on leaving the shops, and their
purchases taken by violence and destroyed. Broken windows and threats
of instant death were so common as to be unworthy of mention, and the
hundred extra armed policemen who were marched into the town were
utterly powerless against the prevailing rowdyism of the Nationalist
party. Honest men were coerced into acting as though dishonest, and
one unfortunate man, who had in a moment of weakness paid
half-a-year's rent, pitifully besought Mr. Smith-Barry's agent to sue
him along with the rest, and declared he would rather pay it over
again than have it known that the money had been paid. "Ye can pay a
year's gale for six months, but ye can't rise again from the dead,"
said this pious victim to circumstances.

At last the leaders were prosecuted, but before this the Boys had
great divarshun. These good Gladstonians, these ardent Home Rulers,
these patriotic purists, these famous members of the sans-shirt
Separatist section, set no limits to their sacrifices in the Good
Cause, stuck at nothing that would exemplify their determination to
bring about the Union of Hearts, were resolved to take their light
from under a bushel and set it in a candlestick. They wrecked many
houses and sorely beat the inmates. They burnt barns, and stacks, and
homesteads, and in one case a poor man's donkey-cart with its load of
oats. They exploded in people's homes metal boxes, leaden pipes, and
glass bottles containing gun-powder, in such numbers as to be beyond
reckoning. They burnt the doors and window sashes of the empty houses,
knocked people down at dark corners with heavy bludgeons, and f