ompelled him to be silent.

"You may curse," continued Mat; "but it's too late now to abscond the
truth--the _sum_ of my wickedness and folly is worked out, and you see
the _answer_. God forgive me, many a young crathur I enticed into the
_Ribbon_ business, and now it's to ind in _Hemp_. Obey the law; or, if
you don't you will find a _lex talionis_ the construction of which is,
that if a man burns or murdhers he won't miss hanging; take warning by
me--by us all; for, although I take God to witness that I was not at
the perpetration of the crime that I'm to be suspinded for, yet I often
connived, when I might have superseded the carrying of such intuitions
into effectuality. I die in pace wid all the world, save an' except the
Findramore people, whom, may the maledictionary execration of a
dying man follow into eternal infinity! My manuscription of conic
sections--" Here an extraordinary buz commenced among the crowd, which
rose gradually into a shout of wild, astounding exultation. The sheriff
followed the eyes of the multitude, and perceived a horseman dashing
with breathless fury up towards the scene of execution. He carried and
waved a white handkerchief on the end of a rod, and made signals with
his hat to stop the execution. He arrived, and brought a full pardon for
Mat, and a commutation of sentence to transportation for life for the
other two. What became of Mat I know not; but in Findramore he never
dared to appear, as certain death would have been the consequence of his
not dying _game_. With respect to Barny Brady, who kept the shebeen,
and was the principal evidence against those who were concerned in this
outrage, he was compelled to enact an _ex tempore_ death in less than
a month afterwards; having been found dead, with a slip of paper in his
mouth, inscribed--"This is the fate of all Informers."

* * * * *

(Note to page 834.)

The Author, in order to satisfy his readers that the character of Mat
Kavanagh as a hedge schoolmaster is not by any means overdrawn, begs to
subjoin (verbatim) the following authentic production of one, which will
sufficiently explain itself, and give an excellent notion of the mortal
feuds and jealousies which subsist between persons of this class:--

"To the Public.--Having read a printed Document, emanating, as it
were, from a vile, mean, and ignorant miscreant of the name of ------,
calumniating and vituperating me; it is evidently the production of a
vain, supercilio