k
hand-in-hand with my administration. Nameless in dark oblivion let it
dwell. Let it be _sub rosa, sub sigilla confessionis, sub-auditer,
sub_ everything. Tell it not in Gath, proclaim it not in Askalon, for
behold, if the people heard, they would marvel, and fear greatly;
and--be afraid."

The officer would then produce his budget, with its horrors, its
indecencies, its record of trickery, treachery, cowardly revenge, and
midnight terrorism. The local press correspondents of the rural
districts are nearly all Nationalists, and they either furnish garbled
reports, or none at all. The reporters of Conservative papers,
comparatively Conservative, I mean, are also Nationalists. The Irish
themselves know not what is taking place ten miles away. How is
England to learn the precise state of things? I have fished up a few
recent samples of minor occurrences which will form part of Mr.
Moriarty's news. These smaller outrages invariably lead up to murder
if the victim resist. They are so many turns of the screw, just to let
the recalcitrant feel what can be done. In the large majority of cases
he gives way at the first hint. Let us relate some neighbouring
experiences.

David Geary, of Castlemahon, late in the evening heard an explosion at
the door of his cottage. He ran out, and found a fuse burning, lying
where it had been cast, while a volley of large stones whizzed past
his head. There had been some litigation between a man named Callaghan
and a road contractor, and Geary had allowed the road contractor's men
to take their food in wet weather under his roof.

On April 15, at two in the morning, a party of masked moonlighters
visited the cottage of Mrs. Breens, of Raheenish, and having fired two
shots through the parlour window, shattering the woodwork by way of
letting the widow know they were there, fired a third through her
bed-room window to expedite the lady's movements. Almost paralysed
with fear, she parleyed with the besieging force, which, by its
spokesman, demanded her late husband's gun, threatening to put
"daylight through her" unless it were instantly given up. It was in
her son's possession, and she hurried to his room. The young dog came
on the scene, and instead of handing out the gun, fired two shots from
a revolver into the darkness. Whereupon the band of Irish
hero-patriots outside fled with electric speed, and returned no more.
At Ardagh the police found a haystack burning. They saved about ten
tons,