The sneers of the Londoners were hard to bear. The dangers which seemed to menace the Irish senators terrified their timid souls. From the 24th to the 31st of May no mail-coach had arrived in Dublin. There was no news save what the Viceroy chose to dribble out; bonfires were seen upon the Wicklow hills. Awful reports were circulating hourly--reports that warrior priests were in possession of Arklow; had arrived at Bray; were at their very gates. If such should prove to be the case, then was the career ended of the faithful Lords and Commons. The sulky scowls of the Liberty-boys boded no good. There would be a massacre of the Innocents. What could Heaven be about to allow its chosen and elect to suffer such gnawing torments? The scum had been evilly ill-treated; but not enough, it seemed, to make them meek and mild. If they were beaten now, they should receive an extra trouncing for presuming in this egregious manner to alarm their betters. Then General Lake started with his army; all the regulars went with him. The capital was handed over to the custody of four thousand yeomen, who--drunken, dissolute, uncurbed--proceeded to make hay while the blood-red sun was shining. Major Sirr and his Staghouse bloodhounds were a power in the state. From being town-major, a title scarcely legible in the list of public encumbrances, Sirr became invested, through the usefulness of his bully band, with all the real powers of the most absolute authority. He was growing rich, for among other trades he was a licensed victualler, owned Nelly's Coffee-house, and obtained the lucrative monopoly of supplying wines to prisoners. He was also a virtuoso; remitted triangle-torture, and sold tickets to his victims for extra light and air, in exchange for orders upon hapless wives for pictures, bric-a-brac, and household stuff. How, when so many came to a violent end, did such a monster escape assassination? Because one of his first rules of conduct was to push forward somebody else to perform a dangerous job. When his hounds had pulled down the quarry, then would he come forward and strike an attitude upon the body of the hunted beast. It is in the hot-bed of public calamity that such fungi grow quick to ripeness. So soon as the counties rose to arms and caused a panic, the life and liberty of every man was at his disposal. If one offended him, he charged him with high treason and swept him off to prison, and a court-martial. Just now, to be accused was much the same as to be convicted. One day, a professor of language was seized and carted to the Riding-school to receive five hundred lashes because a letter was found in his pocket written in the French tongue. Another day (all this before the month of May was out), a gentleman was pistolled in the street by an intoxicated yeoman because his hair was cut short. Of course he was a 'Croppy'! It transpired afterwards that he was an invalid recovering from fever. Another time, a party broke into a baker's shop at dawn,