"Thank God for that! Now, I must leave you to see that our work is thoroughly carried out. You will find your waggons safe, a quarter of a mile along the road. I will leave you to tell all the home news to Walter, who will retell it to me afterwards." "Now tell me all the news," Walter said, when they were together again. "The news is not altogether pleasant," John replied. "The whole of the country round Dublin is being harried by the cavalry in garrison there. They pay no attention whatever to papers of protection, and care but little whether those they plunder are Protestant or Catholic, friend or foe. They go about in small parties, like bands of brigands, through the country; and those who go to Dublin to obtain redress for their exactions are received with indifference, and sometimes with insult, by the authorities. Then, too, we have had trouble at home. "My grandfather became more bigoted than ever, and would, if he had the power, have annihilated every Catholic in Ireland. My father and he had frequent quarrels, and I was in daily expectation of an open breach between them, and of my father giving up his share of the property, and taking us to England. He was a backslider, in my grandfather's eyes. The tales of battle, plunder, and murder seemed to have taken the latter back to his own fighting days; and he was rather inclined to consider the generals as lukewarm, than to join in the general indignation at their atrocious conduct. "Even the sufferings of the Protestants did not seem to affect him. The Lord's work, he said, cannot be carried on without victims. It horrified me to hear him talk. If this was the religion of our fathers, I was fast coming to the conclusion that it was little better than no religion at all. "I think my father and mother saw it in the same light, and the breach between them and my grandfather daily widened. But I have not told you the worst, yet. A party of cavalry rode up the other day, and were about, as usual, to seize upon some cattle. My father was out, and my grandfather stepped forward and asked them 'how they could lay it to their consciences to plunder Protestants when, a mile or two away, there were Catholics lording it over the soil--Catholics whose husbands and sons were fighting in the ranks of the army of James Stuart?'