It is unnecessary to say, that almost immediately the general rumor
of Dalton's arrest for the murder had gone through the whole parish,
together with the fact that it was upon the evidence of the Black
Prophet and Red Rody Duncan, that the proof of it had been brought home
to him. Upon the former occasion there had been nothing against him,
but such circumstances of strong suspicion as justified the neighboring
magistrates in having him taken into custody. On this, however, the two
men were ready to point out the identical spot where the body had been
buried, and to identify it as that of Bartholomew Sullivan. Nothing
remained, therefore, now that Dalton was in custody, but to hold an
inquest upon the remains, and to take the usual steps for the trial
of Dalton at the following assizes, which were not very far distant.
Indeed, notwithstanding the desolation that prevailed throughout the
country, and in spite of the care and sorrow which disease and death
brought home to so many in the neighborhood, there was a very general
feeling of compassion experienced for poor old Dalton and his afflicted
family. And among those who sympathized with them, there was scarcely
one who expressed himself more strongly upon the subject than Mr.
Travers, the head agent of the property on which they had lived,
especially upon contrasting the extensive farm and respectable
residence, from which their middleman landlord had so harshly and
unjustly ejected them, with the squalid kennel in which they then
endured such a painful and pitiable existence. This gentleman had come
to the neighborhood, in order to look closely into the condition of the
property which had been entrusted to his management, in consequence of
a great number of leases having expired; some of which had been held
by extensive and wealthy middlemen, among the latter of whom was our
friend, Dick o' the Grange.

The estate was the property of an English, nobleman, who derived an
income of thirty-two or thirty-three thousand a year from it; and who
though, as landlords went, was not, in many respects, a bad one; yet
when called upon to aid in relieving the misery of those from whose toil
he drew so large an income, did actually remit back the munificent sum
of one hundred pounds! [A recent fact.] The agent, himself, was one of
those men who are capable of a just, but not of a generous action. He
could, for instance, sympathize with the frightful condition of the
people--but to