dreadful the story was. "There has been a murder worse than any that
have happened yet, just the other side of the lake," and he pointed
away to the mountains, and to that part of Lough Corrib which is just
above Cong.

"Another murder?" said Edith.

"Oh, miss, no other murder ever told of had any horror in it equal
to this! I don't know how the governor will keep himself quiet there,
with such an affair as this to be looked after. There are six of them
down,--or at any rate five."

"When a doubt creeps in, one can always disbelieve as much as one
pleases."

"You can hardly disbelieve this, sir, as I have just heard the story
from Sergeant Malcolm. There were six in the house, and five have
been carried out dead. One has been taken to Cong, and he is as good
as dead. Their names are Kelly. An old man and an old woman, and
another woman and three children. The old woman was very old, and the
man appears to have been her son."

"Have they got nobody?" asked Clayton.

"It appears not, sir. But there is a rumour about the place that
there were many of them in it."

"Looking after one another," said Clayton, "so that none should
escape his share of the guilt."

"It may be so. But there were many in it, sir. I can't tell much of
the circumstances, except the fact that there are the five bodies
lying dead." And Hunter, with some touch of dramatic effect and true
pathos, pointed again to the mountains which he had indicated as the
spot where this last murder was committed.

It was soon settled among them that Hunter should go off to the scene
of action, Cong, or wherever else his services might be required,
and that he should take special care to keep his master acquainted
with all details as they came to light. For us, we may give here the
details as they did reach the Captain's ears in the course of the
next few days.

Hunter's story had only been too true. The six persons had been
murdered, barring one child, who had been taken into Cong in a state
which was supposed hardly to admit of his prolonged life. The others,
who now lay dead at a shebeen house in the neighbourhood, consisted
of an old woman and her son, and his wife and a grown daughter, and a
son. All these had been killed in various ways,--had been shot with
rifles, and stoned with rocks, and made away with, after any fashion
that might come most readily to the hands of brutes devoid of light,
of mercy, of conscience, and apparently of fear. It must