will inform me what your
decision has been, and I shall be satisfied, however it incline. I rely
upon you to burn the inclosure.'

A suit-at-law, in which Casey acted as Maher's attorney at this period,
required that the letters addressed to his house for Maher should be opened
and read; and though the letter D. on the outside might have suggested a
caution, Casey either overlooked or misunderstood it, and broke the seal.
Not knowing what to think of this document, which was without signature,
and had no clue to the writer except the postmark of Kilgobbin, Casey
hastened to lay the letter as it stood before the barrister who conducted
Maher's cause, and to ask his advice. The Right Hon. Paul Hartigan was an
ex-Attorney-General of the Tory party--a zealous, active, but somewhat
rash member of his party; still in the House, a member for Mallow, and far
more eager for the return of his friends to power than the great man who
dictated the tactics of the Opposition, and who with more of responsibility
could calculate the chances of success.

Paul Hartigan's estimate of the Whigs was such that it would have in nowise
astonished him to discover that Mr. Gladstone was in close correspondence
with O'Donovan Rossa, or that Chichester Fortescue had been sworn in as a
head-centre. That the whole Cabinet were secretly Papists, and held weekly
confession at the feet of Dr. Manning, he was prepared to prove. He did
not vouch for Mr. Lowe; but he could produce the form of scapular worn by
Mr. Gladstone, and had a facsimile of the scourge by which Mr. Cardwell
diurnally chastened his natural instincts.

If, then, he expressed but small astonishment at this 'traffic of the
Government with rebellion,' for so he called it--he lost no time in
endeavouring to trace the writer of the letter, and ascertaining, so far as
he might, the authenticity of the inclosure.

'It's all true, Casey,' said he, a few days after his receipt of the
papers. 'The instructions are written by Cecil Walpole, the private
secretary of Lord Danesbury. I have obtained several specimens of his
writing. There is no attempt at disguise or concealment in this. I have
learned, too, that the police-constable Dargan is one of their most trusted
agents; and the only thing now to find out is, who is the writer of the
letter, for up to this all we know is, the hand is a woman's.'

Now it chanced that when Mr. Hartigan--who had taken great pains and
bestowed much time to lea