er home.

Under the ravening madness of famine, legal restraints and moral
principles were forgotten, and famine riots broke out. For, studded over
the country were a number of farmers with bursting granaries, who could
afford to keep their provisions in large quantities until a year of
scarcity and high prices arrived; and the people, exasperated beyond
endurance, saw long lines of provision carts on their way to the
neighbouring harbours for exportation.

Such was the extraordinary fact!

Day after day, vessels laden with Irish provisions, drawn from a
population perishing with actual hunger, and with pestilence which it
occasioned, were passing out of our ports, whilst other vessels came in
freighted with our provisions sent back, through the charity of England,
to our relief.

Goaded by suffering, hordes of people turned out to intercept meal-carts
and provision vehicles, and carts and cars were stopped on the highways,
and the food which they carried openly taken away.

Sarah M'Gowan herself went to the Daltons, where typhus and starvation
were doing their worst, to render what service she could, and Mave
Sullivan would have done the same but for the entreaties of her parents,
who feared the terrible fever.

The Black Prophet alone went on his way unmoved, scheming to accomplish
his vile ends. It was not enough for him that Mave was to be abducted;
he had also planned a robbery for the same night, and was further
resolved to procure the conviction of old Condy Dalton for the almost
forgotten murder of Sullivan in the glen.

M'Gowan was driven to this last step by his own disturbed mind. The
disappearance of the tobacco-box troubled him, for on seeking it under
the thatch it was no longer there, and the discovery by his wife of a
skeleton buried near their cabin caused him still greater uneasiness.
Then Sarah had followed him one night, when he was walking in his sleep,
to the secret grave of the murdered man, and though the Prophet did not
say anything on that occasion to incriminate himself, he was vexed by
the occurrence.

So, on the information of Donnel M'Gowan, and a man called Roddy Duncan,
who was deep in the Prophet's subtle villainies, the skeleton was dug
up, and old Condy Dalton arrested.

"It's the will of God!" replied the old man, when the police-officers
entered his unhappy dwelling, and charged him with the murder of
Bartholomew Sullivan. "It's God's will, an' I won't consale it any
long