tation, were in a fair road to disgrace; and, to cap the climax of
the unfortunate man's guilt and remorse, Eugene O'Clery, neglected in
his prison in the old house, on the morning of All Saints' day, first of
November, was found dead on its damp floor! Yes, this spotless,
innocent, and almost infant but heroic confessor of Christ, after a
course of worse than pagan persecution continued for more than two
years, in the midst of legions of blessed spirits passed out of this
world, to add to the joy and glory of heaven by his heroic virtues. O ye
mock philanthropists, ye lovers, on the lip, of freedom of conscience,
where was your voice, where your sympathy, where your indignation, where
your meetings, speeches, and resolutions, when this Catholic child, this
destitute orphan, this noble son of Catholic Ireland, this spotless
confessor and glorious martyr of Christ, was being sacrificed, like his
divine Master, to the demon of cruel sectarianism? O, the blood of this
innocent Abel, of this infant martyr, shed by the cruel Herod of
Presbyterianism, will cry to Heaven for vengeance on your heads, and
bring a curse on your hypocrisy and dissimulation.

The news of Eugene's death, communicated by the servant maid, created a
sudden fear, but very little sympathy, in the brutal family of Mr.
Gulvert. Overwhelmed by the loss of their "darling team," and confounded
by the loss of the money which the mock converts succeeded in cheating
them of, they had neither tears nor sympathy to spare for such a trifle
as the death of a "little Papist child."

The servant girl, however, who was a Scotch lassie, called Jane McHardy,
cried bitterly over the death of the "poor orphan laddie," and, in
company with two neighboring workmen, or cotters, who _passed_ for
Protestant Irishmen, watched around the corpse all night, and on the
day of its interment in the pagan cemetery, situated in a barren corner
of Gulvert's farm, they lingered for a considerable time around the
spot, to the scandal of the religious people who assembled to take a
look at the "face of the dead," and who began to suspect that those two
pretended Protestants were Catholics in disguise. Their suspicions were
well founded, as their subsequent conduct proved; for the two cotters,
on the Sunday following Eugene's death, went to the meeting house for
the last time, where they, in giving their experience, boldly professed
themselves Catholics, asked pardon of the people for havin