uld we commit murther whin
we have only to wait till things turn round, which wid the help of God
will be afore long. We're harassed an' throubled, always pullin' the
divil by the tail, but that won't last for ever. We'll have our own
men, that ondershtands Oireland, to put us right, an' then O'Callaghan
an' all his durty thribe'll be fired out of the counthry before ye can
say black's the white o' my eye; an' black curses go wid thim."

The caretakers are not accessible. Stringent orders forbid the giving
of information to any person whatever. This is unfortunate, as a look
at their diaries would prove amusing. They must feel like rabbits
living in a burrow bored in a sporting district, or the man in the
iron mask, or the late respected Damocles, or the gentleman who saw
the handwriting on the wall. Their sleep must be troubled. They must
have ugly dreams of treasons, stratagems, and spoils, and when they
wake, swearing a prayer or two, they doubtless see through the gloom,
MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN (I quote from memory), in lurid letters on
the ceiling of their stronghold. Their waking visions and their daily
talk must be of guns and pikes, of graves and coffins, shrouds and
skeletons. Perhaps they, like Mr. MacAdam and some others, have
received missives sprinkled with blood, and ornamented with skulls and
cross-bones, those famous national emblems which the Irish tenant
sketches with a rude, untutored art; bold, freehand drawings, done in
gore by hereditary instinct. It may be that they see the newspapers,
that they learn how the other day the house of a caretaker at
Tipperary was, by incendiaries, burned to the ground, the poor fellow
at the time suffering from lockjaw, taking his food with difficulty,
owing to his having some time previously been shot through the face.
Or they may read of the shooting case at Castleisland, and how Mr.
Magilicuddy suggests that such cases be made public, that the people
may know something of the present lawlessness of the country, or of
the narrow squeak of Mr. Walshe, a schoolmaster, living just outside
Ennis, who barely escaped with his life from two bullets, fired at
him, because his wife had been appointed mistress of the girls; or the
sad affair of Mr. Blood of the same district, who being an admittedly
kind and amiable man, is compelled to be always under the escort of
four armed policemen for that he did discharge a herdman without first
asking permission from the local pa