c opinion in Mayo,
the Government had no more than the traditional three courses open to
them--they could have let armed Ulster come in hundreds or thousands,
an invading force, and civil war would have ensued; they could have
allowed the small number of labourers really needed by Mr. Boycott to
arrive by threes and fours, at the risk of not getting alive to Lough
Mask at all; and they could do as they have done. The probable effect
of the movement, if any, will be to bring Mr. Somerset-Maxwell to the
fore at the next contest for the county of Cavan. It may be imagined
that the picked men of Monaghan are not very pleased at playing second
fiddle to an electioneering scheme. Concerning Cavan, the hope of a
fight between the men of the two counties has by no means died away.

To do justice to the Ulster men, they displayed a great deal of
earnestness at Lough Mask House this morning. In the midst of a
hurricane a large number of them went bravely out to a potato field
and worked with a conscience at getting out the national vegetables,
which ran a risk of being completely spoiled by the rain. The
potatoes, however, might, as Mr. Boycott opined, have been spoiled if
they had remained in the ground, and might as well be ruined in one
way as the other.

The remainder of the Orangemen, when I saw them, were busy in the barn
with a so-called "Tiny" threshing-machine, threshing Mr. Boycott's
oats with all the seriousness and solemn purpose befitting their task.
Nothing could have been more dreary and wretched than the entire
proceedings. Mr. Boycott himself had discarded his martial array of
yesterday, and appeared in a herdsman's overcoat of venerable age,
and, as he grasped a crook instead of a double-barrelled gun, looked
every inch a patriarch. He exhibits no profuse gratitude towards the
officious persons who have come to help him, thinking probably that he
would have been nearly as well without them. Thanks to his obstructive
assistants, he is almost overwhelmed with sympathisers gifted by
nature with tremendous appetites. Keen-eyed officers detect the
mutton-bones which tell of unauthorised ovicide, and "clutches" of
geese and chickens vanish as if by magic. There will be a fearful bill
for somebody to pay when the whole business is over, whenever that may
be.

From every quarter I hear acts of the so-called "staunchness" of the
population. When Captain Tomkinson went over to Claremorris yesterday
with dragoons to co