18

IRISH SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

latter, and of the number convicted and adjudged to penal servitude, from 1856 to 1862, we must refer the reader to the Pastoral Letter of Doctor Leahy, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cashel, published in November, 1862. The Three-yearold and Four-year-old factions sprung up in the county Tipperary, as the result of a dispute about the age of a bull. As they could not settle the knotty point by words or dates, they tried the effect of sticks and stones.

Men of the latter class are not esteemed dangerous to society in general.

"You have nothing to apprehend, sir," said an old Irish gentleman, "when they are breaking each others' heads. It is a good sign of the state of the country. But when you see them quiet, with their heads together, you may rest assured they are hatching mischief."

Members of secret and illegal societies make better prisoners than they do subjects.

One of this class, a regular Peep-of-day-boy, was told off to light my fire, clean my boots, and

A PEEP-OF-DAY BOY.

19

make up my room, on the officer's corridor of Spike Island Prison. It was in the winter, and as he entered my apartment-which I left unlocked for him-before the peep of day, and left before the dawn, it was some time before I got a proper look at his face I must acknowledge, I experienced a curious sensation, when half asleep and awake, to feel some one quietly poking about my bed in the dark.

"What do you want?"

"Your boots, sir."

I detained him one morning longer than usual, in order to see his face, and have a chat with him. He was a finely formed young man, about sixand-twenty, with a blue laughing eye, a wellshaped nose, and a good development of forehead.

"What part of the country are you from?" I inquired.

Kilkenny, sir."

"What are you in for?"

"For shooting, sir."

20

IN FOR SHOOTING.

"Now would it be fair to ask you what

you were

shooting at a partridge, a hare, or a rabbit?"

"A man, sir."

"A what?"

"A man, sir," smiling from under his eyebrows.

"May I ask you, why you shot at a man?"

"Because he took ground that didn't belong

66 Did you kill the man ?"

"No, sir, we only frightened him."

"But you intended to kill him?"

"No, sir, only to frighten him, and drive him

off the land."

"But if he had turned on you, and resisted, what then?"

"Why then, sir, I suppose

"You would have shot him dead, and had his

blood upon your soul, going before

your God."

"But it was not I that did it at all, sir."

LETTING THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG. 21

"How is that? I thought you told me you were in for shooting at a man."

"So I am, sir, but it was another man that did it."

"And what became of the other man ?"

"He escaped to America."

"And do you mean to tell me that you had nothing to do with the transaction ?"

"I knew the man that fired."

"Were you with him ?"

"I was, sir."

"The cat is out of the bag at last. Well, I hope you will never try your hand again."

"With the blessing of God, I never will, sir." "That egg is sufficiently boiled now, so I think you may go." Exit Kilkenny man.

CHAPTER III.

WILLIAM BURKE KIRWAN, THE ARTIST OF
IRELAND'S EYE.

THE history of the convict, William Burke Kirwan, who was condemned to death for the murder of his wife, Maria Louisa Kirwan, on "Ireland's Eye," on the 6th of September, 1852, and whose sentence was commuted to transportation for life, will make an interesting novel, about the end of this century; for Kirwan was an artist, and his wife, a young and beautiful woman; but the facts of the case are, even now,