from them in politics and religion. It is true that the
occurrence of murders of this character has been referred to as a proof
that secret societies are not founded or conducted upon a spirit of
religious rancor; but such an assertion is, in some cases, the result
of gross ignorance, and, in many more, of far grosser dishonesty. Their
murdering each other is not at all a proof of any such thing, but it,
is a proof, as we have said, that their habit of taking away human life,
and shedding human blood upon slight grounds or political feelings,
follows them from their conventional principles to their private
resentments, and is, therefore, such a consequence as might naturally be
expected to result from a combination of men who, in one sense, consider
murder no crime. Thus does this secret tyranny fall back upon society,
as well as upon those who are concerned in it, as a double curse;
and, indeed, we believe that even the greater number of these unhappy
wretches whom it keeps within its toils, would be glad if the principle
were rooted out of the country forever.

"An' so you're goin' to put my father down on the black list," said the
beetle-browed son of the Rouser. "Very well, Bartle, do so; but do
you see that?" he added, pointing to the sign of the coffin and the
cross-bones, which he had previously drawn upon the slate; "dhav a
sphirit Neev, if you do, you'll waken some mornin' in a warmer counthry
than Ireland."

"Very well," said Bartle, quietly, but evidently shrinking from a threat
nearly as fearful, and far more daring than his own. "You know I have
nothin' to do except my duty. Yez are goin' aginst the cause, an' I must
report yez; afther whatever happens, won't come from me, nor from any
one here. It is from thim that's in higher quarters you'll get your
doom, an' not from me, or, as I said afore, from any one here. Mark
that; but indeed you know it as well as I do, an' I believe, Rouser, a
good deal bether."

Flanagan's argument, to men who understood its dreadful import, was one
before which almost every description of personal courage must quail.
Persons were then present, Rouser Redhead among the rest, who had been
sent upon some of those midnight missions, which contumacy against the
system, when operating in its cruelty, had dictated. Persons of humane
disposition, declining to act on these sanguinary occasions, are
generally the first to be sacrificed, for individual life is nothing
when obstructin