de of retaliation. The
bravest thought that they were about to have their revenge against
their old masters, and determined that the revenge should be a bloody
one. But the more cowardly, and very much the more numerous on that
account, feared that, poor as they were, they might be the victims.
No man among them could be much poorer than Pat Gilligan, and he had
been chosen as one to be murdered, for some reason known only to the
murderer.

A new and terrible aristocracy was growing up among them,--the
aristocracy of hidden firearms. There was but little said among them,
even by the husband to the wife, or by the father to the son; because
the husband feared his wife, and the father his own child. There had
been a feeling of old among them that they were being ground down by
the old aristocracy. There must ever be such an idea on the part of
those who do not have enough to eat in regard to their betters, who
have more than plenty. It cannot be but that want should engender
such feeling. But now the dread of the new aristocracy was becoming
worse than that of the old. In the dull, dim minds of these poor
people there arose, gradually indeed but quickly, a conviction that
the new aristocracy might be worse even than the old; and that law,
as administered by Government, might be less tyrannical than the law
of those who had no law to govern them. So the people sat silent
at their hearths, or crawled miserably about their potato patches,
speaking not at all of the life around them.

When a week was over, tidings came to them that Captain Clayton,
though he had been shot right through the body,--though the bullet
had gone in at his breast and come out at his back, as the report
went,--was still alive, and likely to live. "He's a-spending every
hour of his blessed life a-making love to a young lady who is
a-nursing him." This was the report brought up to Cong by the steward
of the lake steamer, and was received as a new miracle by the Cong
people. The fates had decreed that Captain Clayton should not fall
by any bullet fired by Lax, the Landleaguer; for, though Lax, the
Landleaguer, was himself fast in prison when the attempt was made,
such became more than ever the creed of the people when it was
understood that Captain Clayton, with his own flesh and blood, was at
this moment making love to Mr. Jones's youngest daughter at Morony
Castle.

CHAPTER XLVII.

KERRYCULLION.

Captain Clayton was thoroughly enjoying