ouse.
They had been more startling, more alarming, more awful for the
tradesmen, and such like, to talk of among themselves, but the
feeling of mystery there had been connected with the secret capacity
of one individual. Everyone, in fact, knew that those murders had
been done by Lax. And all felt that for the doing of murders Lax was
irrepressible. But over there in the neighbourhood of Clonbur, or in
the village of Cong, Lax had never appeared. There was no one in the
place to whom the police could attribute any Lax-like properties. In
that respect, the slaughtering of Mr. Morris had something in it more
terrible even than those other murders. It seemed as though murder
were becoming the ordinary popular mode by which the people should
redress themselves,--as though the idea of murder had recommended
itself easily to their intellects. And then they had quietly
submitted--all of them--to taciturnity. They who were not concerned
in the special case, the adjustment that is of Mr. Morris's rent,
accepted his murder with perfect quiescence, as did those who were
aggrieved. Nobody had seen anything. Nobody had heard anything.
Nobody had known anything. Such were the only replies that were given
to the police. If Mr. Morris, then why not another--and another--till
the whole country would be depopulated? In Mr. Morris's case a
landlord had been chosen; but in other localities agents and
sheriffs' officers,--and even those keepers on a property which a
gentleman is supposed to employ,--were falling to the right and to
the left. But of Mr. Morris and his death nothing was heard.

Yorke Clayton of course went down there, for this, too, was in his
district, and Hunter went with him, anxious, if possible, to learn
something. They saw every tenant on the property; and, indeed, they
were not over numerous. There was not one as to whom they could
obtain evidence that he was ever ferocious by character. "They've got
to think that they have the right to it all. The poor creatures are
not so bad as them that is teaching them. If I think as the farm is
my own, of course I don't like to be made to pay rent for it." That
was the explanation of the circumstances, as given by Mrs. Davies,
of the hotel at Clonbur. And it was evident that she thought it to
be sufficient. The meaning of it, according to Captain Clayton's
reading, was this: "If you allow such doctrines to be preached abroad
by Members of Parliament and Landleague leaders,--to b