When Mat looked at the simple faces of those poor girls, at the bewildered look in the countenances of the young men, and thought of how ignorant and helpless these people were, he could understand the almost insane anguish of their parents as they saw them embark on an ocean so dark and tempestuous and remote as the crowded cities of America, and Mat could penetrate down into the minds of his people and see with the lightning flash of sympathy the dread spectre that tortured the minds, filled the eyes, and darkened the brows of the Irish parents. Station after station, it was always the same sight. The parting relatives were locked in each other's arms; they wept and cried aloud, and swayed in their grief. "Cheer up, father; God is good." "Ah, Paddie, my darlint, I'll never see ye agin." "Oh mother, dear, don't fret." "May God and His Blessed Mother in heaven protect my poor girl." Then more kisses through the carriage windows. The guards and porters frantically called upon the people to stand back; they clung on, careless of danger to life and limb; and as the black, hideous, relentless monster shot away they rushed along the line; they passed into the fields, and waved handkerchiefs, and shouted the names of the parting child or sister or brother; until at last the distance swallowed up the train and its occupants, and then they returned to homes from which forever afterwards the light had passed away. Such were the scenes which Mat saw, and when he got to Ballybay station there was that look on his face which to any keen observer would have revealed much in the Irish character and afforded the key to many startling episodes in Irish history. It was a look at once of infinite rage and infinite despair; it spoke of wrong--hated, gigantic, at once intolerable and insurmountable. One sees a similar impress in the faces of Irishmen in Massachusetts, though the climate of America has reduced the large, loose frame to the thin build of the new country, and has bleached the ruddy complexion of Ireland to a sickly white or an ugly yellow; it is the look one can detect in the faces of the men who dream of death in the midst of slain foes and wrecked palaces; it blazes in the eyes of Healy, as with sacrilegious hand he smites the venerable front of the mother of Parliaments. Mat had come to Ireland for the Easter recess; he had drawn out of the savings bank a few pounds of the money he had placed there for the furnishing of the house which he destined for Mary and Betty Cunningham. He longed to have a share in punishing the perjured traitor who had betrayed the country. The sights he had seen along the route satisfied him as to the temper of the people, and he entered Ballybay secure in the hope that if the traitor had been raised by the town to the opportunity of deceiving the people, he would be cast into the dust by the same hand.