What he meant to do with it I don't know. He could have done no good
without a regular massacre."

"Did he show his pistol?"

"I didn't see it; but I do believe it was there. Some of the old
fogies were awfully solemn about it."

"What was the end of it all?" asked Edith, who together with her
sister was now listening to Frank's narrative.

"You know Mr. Lambert's place on the road towards Gort. It's a long
way off, and I'm a little out of my latitude there. But I went as far
as that, and found a bigger crowd than ever. They said that all Gort
was there; but Tom having drawn the covert, went on, and swore that
he wouldn't leave a place in all County Galway untried. He borrowed
fresh horses, and went on with Barney Smith as grim as death. He is
still drawing his covert somewhere."

It was thus that Frank Jones told the story of that day's hunting.
To his father's ears it sounded as being very ominous. He did not
care much for hunting himself, nor would it much perplex him if the
Landleaguers would confine themselves to this mode of operations. But
as he heard of the crowds surrounding the coverts through the county,
he thought also of his many acres still under water, by the operation
of a man who had taken upon himself to be his enemy. And the whole
morning had been spent in fruitless endeavours to make Florian tell
the truth. The boy had remained surly, sullen, and silent. "He will
tell me at last," Edith had said to her father. But her father had
said, that unless the truth were now told, he must allow the affair
to go by. "The time for dealing with the matter will be gone," he
had said. "Pat Carroll is going about the country as bold as brass,
and says that he will fix his own rent; whereas I know, and all the
tenants know, that he ought to be in Galway jail. There isn't a man
on the estate who isn't certain that it was he, with five or six
others, who let the waters in upon the meadows."

"Then why on earth cannot you make them tell?"

"They say that they only think it," said Edith.

"The very best of them only think it," said Ada.

"And there is not one of them," said Mr. Jones, "whom you could trust
to put into a witness-box. To tell the truth, I do not see what
right I have to ask them to go there. If I was to select a man,--or
two, how can I say to them, 'forget yourself, forget your wife and
children, encounter possible murder, and probable ruin, in order that
I may get my revenge on this man'?"

"