'And this is the silent protest of the people! Have they sunk to this?' cried the Viceroy hoarsely, pulling at his cravat to ease the lump that was in his throat. 'Poor creatures! Ground down so low that they can protest only by their silence--a reverent silence, like that of onlookers at a martyrdom! Who is acting here? Call him forward.' Presently an aide-de-camp returned through an archway with the sheriff. The aide's eyes were full of tears. He was a youth new to Ireland. This pathetic method of protesting was strangely, weirdly tragic! He had noted how, as the far-off moaning continued, and the thuds poured down in an unrelenting shower, these fair young necks had winced in concert, though no murmur passed their lips. Yet when the postilions flicked them, calling up red marks upon the skin, they made no movement, nor uttered cry. All their feeling was for the suffering victim on the triangle, in the barrack-yard yonder, whose life the cat was slowly beating out of him. None was left for a paltry personal smart, which lasts a second and is gone. 'What are you doing there?' asked the frowning Viceroy. ''Deed it's a Croppy being flogged till he tells the truth, as is the rule,' returned the sheriff confidentially, with grins. He knew not the bluff speaker, but respected the golden coach. 'Learn then, in time, lest your own bones suffer for it,' retorted Lord Cornwallis, 'that I am his Majesty's new representative. That my first order on arriving in your capital shall be to put down corporal punishment in any form whatever, unless sanctioned and signed for by me.' The sheriff knew not what to make of it. This the new Viceroy, and these his orders? He merely bowed and smirked, taking his cue from my Lord Clare. A very old man in a long frieze coat, seeming to read some sort of unusual sympathy in the flushed weather-beaten face of the last speaker, advanced to the carriage-window with a grotesque salute. 'What can we do for you, my man?' quoth the bluff soldier, in the hope of some answering quip which should warm away the chill which rested on his heart. 'Plaze, yer honour!' quavered the aged man, with a vacant smile of senility, 'sure I'd loike, if it moight be, for my two lads foreninst the barriks there, as are sufferin', to be hanged at onst! And, av ye plaze, might I go up too? Wid the blessing of God, I'd loike to shake a fut wid my boys!' Lord Cornwallis pulled up the window with a jerk; and Lord Clare thought the omen not quite so good which marked the arrival of the new Viceroy. CHAPTER II. MR. CASSIDY IS IN DOUBT.