that a reduced gentlewoman, Miss Sally
Carmody, lived, in or about the year 1761. There was
a deal of French money sent over in those times,
and some, it was thought, appropriated it to
their own purposes. Frank Arthur even, when
he was building Arthur's Quay, was accused of
having got some. I am quite sure this was
untrue, but the story was believed, because, you
see, in those days it was thought such an impudent
thing for a Papist to build a whole quay!
Three times, they say, he was on the point of
being hanged, but the Earl of Limerick saved
him. However this might be, Frank Arthur,
being considered mighty uppish (that was the
word) for a Papist, was suspected; and not
himself alone, but all who were known to be
connected with him. Arthur's wife was better-born
than himself, and poor Miss Sally Carmody was
a cousin of hers, and well known as such. So
she, good old lady, was under suspicion also.

Miss Sally being, as I said, reduced, was
obliged to take in needlework to support herself.
She was very skilful at her needle, and numbers
of fine ladies used to mount the stairs to her
lodgings, to entrust her with work they were
particular about. One would think there could
be nothing very dangerous in this poor gentlewoman.
Still, being related to Arthur's wife,
she was watched, and she knew it. Above all,
she lived in constant dread of a fellow-lodger
who occupied the rooms on the ground floor,
immediately below her. This woman, who
followed the calling of clear-starcher, was an
acrid close uncommunicative little body, very
industrious, but very odd in her ways. She
was what the neighbours called "a bitter
Protestant;" consequently she was employed by
all the Protestant ladies of Limerick, and was,
moreover, a weekly pensioner of some religious
society. By Miss Sally the little Protestant
clear-starcher was looked upon as a spy, and
dreaded and avoided accordingly.

One day, a handsome carriage stopped at the
door, and a lady of modish appearance having
inquired for Miss Sally, alighted, and ascended
the stairs to her room. She had some very fine
work with her, and concerning this she had a
hundred instructions to give. Miss Sally remembered afterwards, that while she was talking
about the work the lady's eyes kept glancing here
and there rather curiously. But as this was by
no means unusual in her fine-lady visitors, it
caused her no uneasiness at the time. Her
customer at last departed, and Miss Sally resumed
her occupation, suspended during the rather
tedious directions to which she had had to
hearken.

The visitor's sharp eyes, however, had not
gone a-prying in vain. Inside the front room
there was, as I have often seen in those old
houses, a little room or closet, without any window,
only lighted by means of a glass door
connecting it with the apartment without. It came
out subsequently that the fine lady spy had seen
the shadow of a man inside. In less than half an
hour the whole street was filled with soldiers, and
up to Miss Sally's room they came to secure their
prisoner. They knew he had not had time to
escape; they also knew that from the closet
there was no second outlet; so when they were
in the room without, they were sure he was
trapped.

Into the closet, then, they thronged, General
Duff himself at their head. But the room was
apparently empty. It was without furniture,
save a mattress, a chair, and a table on which
were the remains of a meal. In one corner was
a little heap of firewood, but not large enough
to conceal a man. For a moment the soldiers
were taken aback; next moment they were
reassured.

There was a bricked-up fireplace in the room;
and round it they all gathered. At that time
there was a tax called hearth-money, and people
used to build a sort of wall of bricks round a
fireplace, that the inspector might see when he
came that they made no use of it. Ay, and
maybe when he'd turn his back the bricks would
be taken down until the time came for the next
visit. However, as luck would have it, Miss
Sally really had no use for this fireplace: I
suppose it was as much as she could do, poor lady,
to keep up the fire in the front room. And it
so happened that the bricks were well and
firmly built, and even plastered over, and that
they reached to within a couple of feet of the
ceiling. There was just room for a man inside,
and down here, as the soldiers guessed, the
poor fugitive had dropped. He had had only a
few minutes' notice of their coming, and, catching
up a hatchet that was in the corner with the
firewood, he had just had time to clamber up and
gain his temporary place of refuge when they
broke in.

With a throbbing heart he listened to their
threats, their cries of anger, their oaths. He
heard them asking if it would not be best to
shoot down upon him, and kill him in his lair?
But General Duff bawled out, "No, no! Not
for a hundred thousand pounds! He must be
taken alive! He cannot escape us; pull down
the brickwork, and he is ours!" Then they set
to, and worked hotly, and what with the knocking
and hammering and cursing and shouting,
there was such an uproar as was never before
heard in poor Miss Sally Carmody's lodgings.
The bricks being solidly built and plastered,
it was not so easy as they had anticipated to
tear them away. And when at last they did
effect their purpose, their supposed prisoner
had again balked them—how was plainly to be
seen! While they were unrooting the bricks
that screened him from them, he, seeing, or
rather feeling, that there was no hearthstone
under his feet, had conceived the hope that by
cutting away the floor he might drop down into
the room below, and so have another chance of
getting off. With the hatchet he had caught
up, he fell to work, the noise he made
completely drowned by the uproar without. And
some minutes before their object was effected,
he landed in the room below.

Instantly the alarm was given by the soldiers
nearest the hearth-place. Some of their number