“There is some devilry in this,” I said to myself. “Even if the bolt had not been recently changed I should strongly object to be anywhere where Mullen could fasten me in if he had a mind to. I shall have to take out these screws one by one with my penknife and make each hole so large that the screws don’t bite. Then I’ll replace them, and the whole concern will look as it was before; but if Mullen should fasten me in, one good kick will fetch the bolt off and let me out.” The job was tedious and lengthy, for I had to work in silence and with a penknife in place of a screw-driver. But I got through it at last, and having barricaded the door from the inside as best I could, I pulled out the paper which had fallen from Mullen’s pocket. A glance was sufficient to satisfy me that my find was no less than the latter part of another manifesto, printed like previous manifestoes in rude capitals, and bearing the well-known signature-- “BY ORDER, “CAPTAIN SHANNON.” It was evidently an attempt to stir up, for his own ends and purposes, the disloyalty of the discontented Irish, and by professing to champion their cause, to enlist their sympathy and co-operation in the war which was being waged against England. Here is the document itself:-- “If England have annexed Ireland because she is smaller and lies near, then might France with equal justice annex England, for Ireland lies no nearer to England than England to France. “Ireland is no mere pendant to England, like Anglesea or the Isle of Wight; she is a separate and different country, scarcely smaller in size, complete in herself, and peopled by a nation of different creed, different temperament, and different race. “The Celt shall not be ruled by the Teuton, nor the Teuton by the Celt. “God gave Ireland her independence when he cut her off from England and separated the two countries by dividing seas. “And they whom God has set asunder let no man join. “But you have joined us to yourself in the union of bondage and oppression, and when we cry out under our bondage--a bondage which, were the cases reversed, England would be as little ready to tolerate as Ireland--how do you meet our righteous demands? “By trying to humour us as a woman seeks to humour a troublesome child to whom she tosses a toy. By sending us what you dare not insult the Scotch by sending to Scotland--a sawdust figure, of which you hold the strings, who is to play at being king and holding court to please us. But we--ah God! was ever so unreasonable a people?--we do not simper and dance to the fiddling of this dummy king who is not even of our own choosing, for we are ungracious enough to remember that we have in our midst men of older lineage and nobler blood than he.