ot have been a funeral, inasmuch as he saw that
it came from the churchyard instead of going to it. The body was covered
with a mort-cloth, so that he could not ascertain whether it was that
of a man or a woman. Walking at its head as a chief mourner does at
a funeral, was an old man with gray hair, who appeared to have every
feature of his venerable countenance impressed with the character of an
affliction which no language could express. He neither spoke nor looked
to either side of him, but walked onward in a stupor of grief that was
evidently too deep for tears--for he shed none, his face was pale even
unto ghastliness, whilst at the same time there was a darkness over it,
which evidently proceeded from the gloom of a broken down and hopeless
heart.

John Purcel, after making some inquiry as to the cause of this singular
procession, was enabled, from several of the by-standers, to ascertain
the following affecting and melancholy particulars. The reader cannot
forget the conversation between the proctor and his sons, concerning
the murder of a certain farmer named Murray, in the early part of this
narrative. The poor youth who had been appointed, under the diabolical
system of Whiteboyism, to perpetrate that awful crime, was the very
young man who, during the journey of the Whiteboys to the mountains, had
held a kind of _sotto voce_ conversation with the mysterious person
who proved himself to be so sincere a friend to Frank M'Carthy. A
misunderstanding for several years, or rather a feeling of ill-will, had
subsisted between his father and Murray, and as this circumstance was
known, the malignant and cowardly miscreants availed themselves of it to
give a color of revenge to the murder, in order to screen themselves.
At all events, the poor misguided youth, who had been stimulated with
liquor, and goaded on to the commission of the crime, from fear of a
violent death if he refused it, was tried, found guilty, and executed,
leaving his childless father and mother, whose affections were centred
in him, in a state of the most indescribable despair and misery. By the
intercession and influence of friends, his body was restored to them,
and interred in the churchyard, from which the procession just mentioned
had issued. The heart, however--or to come nearer the truth--the reason
of the mother--that loving mother--could not bear the blow that deprived
her of her innocent boy--her pride, her only one. In about a week after