CONSEQUENCES OF THE ROBBERY. 119 



being concealed within his territory but 1 think now, the 

 sooner Mr. Burke levants the better. There is a settled 

 gloom upon my cousin's brow, and yonder consultation with 

 his foster-brother, my island friend, bodes the present pro- 

 prietor of the portmanteau little good. To intercept a visi- 

 tor's effects, was indeed to 



" Beard the lion in his den, 

 The Douglas in his hall." 



But dinner is announced. 



I wish the value of the Colonel's assets could be ascertained, 

 and that I dared liquidate the amount. An earthquake, I 

 think, would not have created half the sensation. My kinsman 

 is dreadfully irate his feudal power is shaken to the centre, 

 and either he or Mr. Burke must leave Ballycroy. It is quite 

 evident that he tacitly permitted the outlaw to conceal himself 

 in this neighbourhood, and considered that he existed but by 

 his sufferance. There is a strange dash of barbarism among 

 the old proprietors still. To hunt a felon down, who acknow- 

 ledges the supremacy of the master, would be Infra dignita tern. 

 The good old system would then be at an end and, in time* 

 even a bailiff might pass what has been the Ultima Thule * 

 the law, and live. My cousin is aware of this. He feels that 

 the rights and immunities of his modern Alsatia must not be 

 lightly compromised. His rent-roll may be small, but he can 

 boast, as Dick Martin did of Connemara, that " here, thank 

 God ! the King's writ is not worth a halfpenny." Hence the 

 impudence* of Mr. Burke is intolerable. An embassy will 

 be dispatched, and if the Colonel's wardrobe be not forthwith 

 restored, with full satisfaction for the insult, I hold the value 

 of the outlaw's life to be not worth a pin's fee. 



* I remember hearing this word used in a court of justice in a most 

 curious sense. A man was on trial, capitally indicted for murder. The 

 chief witness on his examination detailed the leading incidents his 

 being awakened by cries of help, rising, striking a light, opening his 

 door, and finding a man dead upon the threshold. " And what did you 

 do next, my friend ?" interrogated the crown lawyer. " Why," replied 

 the witness, with amazing sangfroid, " 1 called out, * Are any of ye there 



that kilt the boy ? By J s, I'll give a thirteen to him who'll tell me 



who it was that had the impudence to murder a man at my door !' " 



