it rather shortens the boys' fun. They fire,
but he does not fall. A more terrible death
awaits him. Lynch is seen no more. The
lad Rispin, younger and more passionately
eager for life, clambers on to a side-wall, from
which the roof is now burnt away, and supplicates
for mercy. Mercy! Ask a shark for mercy
when he turns to snap, or a wolf after a second
bite at the lamb. The answer is a dozen
clashing bayonets in his side and back; and he
topples, screaming, headlong into the seething
caldron of flame.

Bursts of fire and smoke from the windows;
one thrilling scream, a shrill shriek from
child; then a deep and terrible silence. The
house glows like a red-hot crucible. Look in
at the windows and you see only a raging volume
of flame. At last the red rafters of the roof fall
in, crashing and snapping, a storm of spark
glitters before the wind, a gust of flame rises
up, then a tall pillar of illuminated smoke. The
fire abates, and settles down over the eight poor
murdered people. Devan and his men discharge
their guns in noisy joy, the circle of one hundred
monsters toss their hats, huzza and cry:

"Lynch, we wish you luck of your hot bed."

Malone and another man say, as they go:

"All is well now, if we only had Mr. Filgate"
(the Louth magistrate, who tried the three
Ribbonmen whom poor Lynch had convicted).

It has been a glorious night's work for the
Ribbonmen. When they leave the house—an
hour ago so cheerful, now a charred vault—
Campbell shouts to Gologly and the others,
who have been holding the horses in the boggy
part of the lane:

"We burned the little ones as well as the
big ones, and left no one to tell the story;
Begor! Lynch and Rooney won't go and inform
against us again."

This very Gologly to whom he thus spoke
betrayed Campbell, and brought him to the
gallows.

Early in the morning, after this dreadful
event, a man named Owen Reilly, whose cabin
is about four miles from Lynch's house, hears
voices in the road, and, being alarmed, barricades
his door. A body of armed men at that hour
can mean no good. There is a loud and angry
rapping, but he is still unwilling to open, till
the voices insist on it, assuring him that no
harm is meant to anybody in that house.
They merely want something to eat and drink.
Reilly opens the door, and sees some savage-
looking smoke-blackened men, who call for
oaten bread and a bowl of milk. They are
sullen, tired, and one of them has a black
scorched wound on his face. That is Keeran,
whom Lynch had wounded.

Next day the ruin of poor Lynch's house
is visited by half the country-side. Mr. Filgate
rides over and inspects with horror the four
blackened walls, and the charred and ghastly
remains of the eight murdered people. The
peasants stand silently round, in secret sorrow
or secret approval. The sunshine falls on the
white ashes of the roof, the broken door, and
the trampled garden strewn with half-burned
straw.

The crowd opens and part, when an old
woman, bowed with grief, and tossing her arms like
a keener at an Irish funeral, comes to look at
the black mummies that, so short a time ago,
were human beings. She recognises two of them
—her son, whose shoulder, with a birth-mark
on it, is still unconsumed; and Biddy Richards,
one of the maid-servants. The rest she cannot
guess at, they are so dreadfully burned.
Poor Rooney is found sitting beside his wife,
with the blackened body of his fine little boy,
only five months old, sheltered between his
knees. The sledge-hammer lies on the grass
near the door, and the garden is littered with
straw and flax.

There are too many people in this horrible
conspiracy for the whole to remain long
undiscovered. Devan is at once seized. It is noticed
that a neighbour named M'Cabe is not among
the people who flock to see the ruins of Lynch's
house. A labourer, named Greenan, who goes
to Liswinny to tell Mr. Filgate, the magistrate,
of the event, is told M'Cabe is lame, and
confined to the house with a "touch me not,"
or boil on the knee. But Alice Rispin sees him,
two days after the fire, vaulting over a ditch,
and in perfect health, and soon after an informer
deposes to his having been at the fire.

Approvers soon come in, tempted by the reward
of fifteen hundred pounds—not very
reputable men—generally thieves or outlaws—
but still clear and consistent in their stories,
all witnesses of the crime, all active sharers
in its accomplishment. The first, Bernard
M'Ilroy, was once a soldier in the Meath
militia. He informs to Mr. Filgate. He had
been forced into the business by Devan, and
had not dared to refuse to help burn
Wildgoose Lodge. A second approver, Peter
Gologly, who was in jail for a murder, held the
horses in the lane, saw the blaze, heard the
shots fired, and the huzzaing. Michael Kernan,
a third approver, will confess afterwards that he
knows nothing, except on hearsay from M'Ilroy,
who told him they should share some seven
thousand pounds' reward. Thomas Gubby, another
approver, is a thief; Patrick Murphy, the last
approver, is under sentence to be hanged at
Trim as a thief and murderer when he comes
forward as a witness against the men by this
time seized and thrown into prison.

These wretches were tried before the
Honourable Justice Fletcher at the Louth Lent
assizes, held in Dundalk on the 5th, 6th, and
7th of March, 1817, for the burning of Edward
Lynch and his whole family of eight persons.

Serjeant Joy, in opening the case with much
force and eloquence, "deplored the wretched
state of depravity into which the lower orders of
people in this country seemed to have fallen,
No sooner did an honest individual seek redress
of injuries from the impartial laws of his country,
than an infernal conspiracy was entered into for
his ruin. The unfortunate Lynch had evinced
his courage and honesty in the prosecution of