The stern, proud man said, "Then, why, in the name of Heaven, do you not reveal some other remedy? Why do you not enlighten all Ireland? Why don't you instruct Government? The unhappy wretches who have been swept away by force are no people, no tenants of mine. They squatted themselves down, as a swarm of locusts fix themselves while a green blade is left. They obstruct all improvement; they will not till the ground themselves; nor will they quit it to allow me to provide more industrious and provident husbandmen to cultivate it. Land that teems with fertility, and is shut out from bearing and bringing forth food for man, is accursed. Those who have been evicted, not only rob me; but their more industrious fellows." "They will murder us!" said the wife, "some day for these things. They will--" Her words were cut short suddenly by her husband starting, and standing in a listening attitude. "Wait a moment," he said, with a peculiar calmness, as if he had just got a fresh thought; and his lady, who did not comprehend what was the cause, but hoped that some better influence was touching him, unloosed her hands from his arm. "Wait just a moment," he repeated, and stepped from the room, opened the front door, and without his hat, went out. "He is intending to cool down his anger," thought his wife: "he feels a longing for the freshness of the air." But she had not caught the sound which had startled his quicker, because more excited ear: she had been too much engrossed by her own intercession with him: it was a peculiar whine from the mastiff, which was chained near the lodge-gate, that had arrested his attention. He stepped out. The black clouds which overhung the moor had broken, and the moon's light struggled between them. The tall and haughty man stood erect in the breeze and listened. Another moment--there was a shot, and he fell headlong upon the broad steps on which he stood. His wife sprang with a piercing shriek from the door, and fell on his corpse. A crowd of servants gathered about them, making wild lamentations, and breathing vows of vengeance. The murdered master and the wife were borne into the house. The heron soared from its lofty perch, and wheeled with terrified wings through the night air. The servants armed themselves; and, rushing furiously from the house, traversed the surrounding masses of trees. Fierce dogs were let loose, and dashed frantically through the thickets. All was, however, too late. The soaring heron saw gray figures, with blackened faces, stealing away--often on their hands and knees--down the hollows of the moorlands toward the village; where the two Irish horsemen had, in the first dusk of that evening, tied their lean steeds to the old elder bush.