ined considerable profit,--but at considerable risk. With this
employment Captain Ussher had made himself acquainted, and instead of
seizing the man whilst in possession of the whiskey, he had sounded
him, and finding him sufficiently a villain, had taken him into his
pay as a spy; this trade Cogan found more lucrative even than the
former, but also more dangerous; as if detected he might reckon on
his death as certain. He still continued to buy the spirits from
the people, but in smaller quantities; he offered lower prices; and
though he nominally kept up the trade, it was more for the purpose of
knowing where the potheen was, than of buying and selling it.

It was not wonderful therefore that more seizures than ever had been
lately made, and that the men were getting more cautious, and at the
same time more irate and violent in their language. In the present
instance the party had come on the cabin in question unawares; not
that they might not have been noticed, but that the people were
confident of not being suspected. No whiskey had been run there; and
the barley had only lately been brought in turf kishes from another
cabin where it was not thought to be safe.

Three men and an old woman were found in the cabin when Captain
Ussher entered with three of his own men. On being questioned they
denied the existence of either whiskey, malt, or barley; but on
searching, the illicit article was found in the very kishes in which
it had been brought; they were easily discovered shoved into the dark
chimney corner farthest from the door.

"Dat I may never see the light," began the old woman, "if I thought
it wor anything but the turf, and jist the kishes that Barney Smith
left there, the morn; and he to say nothing of the barley, and bring
all these throubles on me and yer honer,--the like of him, the
spalpeen!"

"Never mind my trouble, my dear," said Ussher; "it is little we think
of the trouble of easing you; and who's Barney Smith, ma'am?"

"Oh, then, Barney's jist my daughter's own son; and he coming down
from the mountains with turf, and said he must lave the kishes here,
till he just went back round Loch Sheen with the ass, he'd borrowed
from Paddy Byrne, and he'd be--"

"And very good natured it was of him to leave you the malt instead of
the turf; and who are you, my good men?"

The men had continued smoking their pipes quietly at the fire without
stirring.

"We be sthrangers here, yer honer," said one; "tha