“To Chief Secretary Balfour, Castle, Dublin.--What are your people about? What new stupidity is this they have just accomplished? Are there law advisers at the Castle, or are the cases for prosecution submitted to the members of the police force? Are you aware, or is it from me you are to learn, that there is now in the Richmond Jail, under accusation of “Celtism,” a gentleman of a loyalty the equal of my own? Some blunder, if not some private personal malignity, procured his arrest, which, out of regard for me as an old personal friend, he neither resisted nor disputed, withholding his name to avoid the publicity which could only have damaged the Government. I am too ill to leave my room, or would go over at once to rectify this gross and most painful blunder. If Pemberton is too fine a gentleman for his office, where was Hacket, or, if not Hacket, Burrowes? Should this case get abroad and reach the Opposition, there will be a storm in the House you will scarcely like to face. Take measures--immediate measures--for his release, by bail or otherwise, remembering, above all, to observe secrecy. I will send you by post to-night the letter in which F. communicates to me the story of his capture and imprisonment. Had the mischance befallen any other than a true gentleman and an old friend, it would have cost us dearly. Nothing equally painful has occurred to me in my whole official life. “'Let the case be a warning to you in more ways than one. Your system of private information is degenerating into private persecution, and would at last establish a state of things perfectly intolerable. Beg F. as a great favor to me, to come over and see me here, and repeat that I am too ill to travel, or would not have delayed an hour in going to him. There are few men, if there be one, who would in such a predicament have postponed all consideration of self to thoughts about his friends and their interest, and in all this we have had better luck than we deserved. “'Wilmington'” “Go over it again,” said Balfour, as he lit a cigar, and, placing a chair for his legs, gave himself up to a patient rehearing of the despatch. “I wonder who F. can be that he is so anxious about. It _is_ a confounded mess, there's no doubt of it; and if the papers get hold of it, we're done for. Beg Pemberton to come here, and leave us to talk together.” “Read that, Pem,” said Balfour, as he smoked on, now and then puffing a whiff of tobacco at his terrier's face,--“read that, and tell me what you say to it.” Though the lawyer made a great effort to seem calm and self-possessed, Balfour could see that the hand that held the paper shook as he read it. As he finished, he laid the document on the table without uttering a word. “Well?” cried Balfour, interrogatively,--“well?”