duty, sends down to Spa-hill the very best repeating rifles that money
can buy.

The upshot of the matter is that Mr. Townsend has been so threatened
that he has yielded to the entreaties of his family and left Kilfinane
for a week or two, at any rate. He is, however, like most of his
profession, a very determined man, and declared that he would come
home and eat his Christmas dinner in his own house, "despite of foes;"
but Mrs. Townsend, who, like the lady to whom I referred in a previous
letter, has borne up nobly under her severe trial, was so scared at
the thought of her husband's coming among a population banded together
against him that she set off on Saturday and joined him, as the only
way of averting some terrible disaster; for there is little doubt that
the law will be put in force against Murphy now that his six months
for "redemption" have expired; and nobody can tell what will happen at
Lisheen any more than at Ennistymon if writs are issued against the
tenants on the Macnamara estate, or on Mr. Stacpoole's property, if he
perseveres in his resolution to "Dublin writ" the people with whom he
has to deal.

So the family at Spa-hill is broken up this Christmas; father and
mother are both away--where I should hardly divulge, but assuredly
where their Christmastide will be passed peacefully, if not joyfully.

Another gentleman of these parts is being severely "Boycotted," to wit
Mr. T. Sanders, of Sanders Park, Charleville, county Cork, just over
the border from county Limerick; the Mr. Sanders, in fact, whom I saw
the Palladians roaring and yelling at on the occasion of my first
visit to the classic battlefield of the "three and four year olds." On
that occasion he had been vainly trying to get in rents for the
charitable bequest known as Erasmus Smith's Schools, and Pallas was
full of noisy and more or less drunken Palladians, who dealt with Mr.
Sanders in such wise that the police were obliged to see him into a
railway carriage, and stand by the door till the train moved on. I
would fain have called upon Mr. Sanders as I drove to Charleville, but
the civil and obliging landlord of Lincoln's Hotel at that place, who
supplied me with an excellent carriage and horses, politely apologised
for his inability to drive me thither. He could not possibly enter
Sanders Park, nor would any of his men go near that abhorred spot. No
orders concerning Spa-hill had been issued by the "Real Government" in
the absence of