in another chapter, the search was practically abandoned by almost every one concerned. CHAPTER IV. "IT IS A CONSPIRACY"--DR. CRONIN'S FRIENDS CLAIM THE MURDER WAS A POLITICAL ASSASSINATION--THE PUBLIC SCEPTICAL UNTIL STARTLING DEVELOPMENTS ARE MADE--THE PHYSICIAN IN DANGER OF HIS LIFE FOR YEARS--PREVIOUS ATTEMPTS TO "REMOVE" HIM--THE TROUBLE IN THE CLAN-NA-GAEL--CHARGES AND COUNTER CHARGES--THE BUFFALO CONVENTION--WHY HIS "REMOVAL" BECAME A NECESSITY TO CERTAIN PEOPLE. "He is dead I feel sure of it." So said Mrs. Conklin, when the news of the finding of the bloody trunk, the cotton batting, and the locks of matted hair, had been brought to her. "This is the work of political enemies" echoed Frank T. Scanlan. "Dr. Cronin has been the victim of a political assassination" was the immediate verdict of a number of prominent Irishmen of New York, Philadelphia and other places. And the developments soon to come showed that they knew whereof they spoke. But the general public, while it listened and eagerly discussed the mystery, was inclined to be sceptical. A political murder in the free, liberty loving United States. It could not be! Two Presidents had, it was true, been shot in cold blood by madmen; and in different parts of the country and on divers occasions men had been killed in scrimmages at the polls as a result of troubles growing out of election affairs. But these were not political murders in the general acceptation of the term, not the deliberate well planned taking of life; not the outgrowth of a conspiracy to "remove" some one whose particular political predelictions or position had rendered him obnoxious to those politically associated with him. "Such things might happen abroad it is true" said the sceptics, "but on American soil it would be an impossibility." DR. CRONIN AS A PROPHET. Dr. Cronin's friends were not among the sceptics. Very well they knew that there was more than ordinary ground for the fears they had expressed. There was abundant evidence that long before his death the physician had known that his life was threatened, and that any day might be his last. This knowledge, or belief,--it may be put in either way--was clearly outlined in a pamphlet which, under the title of "Is it a conspiracy," he caused to be printed and circulated among his friends a year before his taking off. In this document which, at the time was summed up by most of those that read it, as a mass of words and phrases without meaning to any one but the writer, Dr. Cronin clearly outlined the fact that he would meet his end by violent means. There was a key to the story which, when read between the lines after his disappearance, made its meaning clear to many of those to whom it had previously seemed but a jumble of incoherences. The closing paragraph, in particular, was an extraordinary indication of the prophetic spirit that had been generated in the physician by the dangers that he knew assailed him.