f vengeance, and
nothing should be told of the deed, let the policemen busy themselves
as they might. And the beauty of the system consisted in the fact
that the fear of telling was brought home to the minds of all men,
women, and children. Though it was certain that a woman had seen a
cow's tail mangled, though it could be proved beyond all doubt that
she was in the field when the deed was done, yet if she held her
peace no punishment would await her. The policeman and the magistrate
could do nothing to her. But Thady O'Leary, the man who had cut a
cow's tail off, could certainly punish her. If nothing else were done
she could be boycotted, or, in other words, not allowed to buy or
sell the necessaries of life. Or she could herself be murdered, as
had happened to Pat Gilligan. The whole thing had seemed to run so
smoothly!

But now there had come, or would soon come, a change o'er the spirit
of the dream. The murder of Pat Gilligan, though it had made one in
the necessary sequence of events, one act in the course of the drama
which, as a whole, had appeared to be so perfect, seemed to them all
to have about it something terrible. No one knew what offence Pat
Gilligan had given, or why he had been condemned. Each man began to
tremble as he thought that he too might be a Pat Gilligan, and each
woman that she might be a Mrs. Kelly. It was better to go back to the
police and the magistrates than this!

I do not know that we need lean too heavily on the stupidity of the
country's side in not having perceived that this would be so. The
country's side is very slow in perceiving the course which things
will take. These ten murderers had been brought together, each from
fear of the others; and they must have felt that though they were
ten,--a number so great when they considered the employment on
which they were engaged as to cause horror to the minds of all of
them,--the ten could not include all who should have been included.
Had the other three been taken in, if that were possible, how much
better it would have been! But the desire for murder had not gone so
far,--its beauty had not been so perfectly acknowledged as to make
it even yet possible to comprise a whole parish in destroying one
family.

Then the three had seen that the whole scheme, the mystery of the
thing, the very plan upon which it was founded, must be broken down
and thrown to the winds. And we can imagine that, when the idea first
came upon the minds of