Justice is the maintaining of equilibrium. The blood of Cain must cry, not from the lips of the Avenger, but from the aggrieved Earth herself who demands that atonement shall be made for a disturbance of her consciousness. All justice is, therefore, readjustment. A thwarted consciousness has every right to clamour for assistance, but not for punishment. This latter can only be sought by timorous and egotistic Intellect, which sees the Earth from which it has emerged and into which it must return again in its own despite, and so, being self-centred and envious and a renegade from life, Reason is more cruelly unjust, and more timorous than any other manifestation of the divinely erratic energy—erratic, because, as has been said, “the crooked roads are the roads of genius.” Nature grants to all her creatures an unrestricted liberty, quickened by competitive appetite, to succeed or to fail; save only to Reason, her Demon of Order, which can do neither, and whose wings she has clipped for some reason with which I am not yet acquainted. It may be that an unrestricted mentality would endanger her own intuitive perceptions by shackling all her other organs of perception, or annoy her by vexatious efforts at creative rivalry. It will, therefore, be understood that when the Leprecauns of Gort na Cloca Mora acted in the manner about to be recorded, they were not prompted by any lewd passion for revenge, but were merely striving to reconstruct a rhythm which was their very existence, and which must have been of direct importance to the Earth. Revenge is the vilest passion known to life. It has made Law possible, and by doing so it gave to Intellect the first grip at that universal dominion which is its ambition. A Leprecaun is of more value to the Earth than is a Prime Minister or a stockbroker, because a Leprecaun dances and makes merry, while a Prime Minister knows nothing of these natural virtues—consequently, an injury done to a Leprecaun afflicts the Earth with misery, and justice is, for these reasons, an imperative and momentous necessity. A community of Leprecauns without a crock of gold is a blighted and merriless community, and they are certainly justified in seeking sympathy and assistance for the recovery of so essential a treasure. But the steps whereby the Leprecauns of Gort na Cloca Mora sought to regain their property must for ever brand their memory with a certain odium. It should be remembered in their favour that they were cunningly and cruelly encompassed. Not only was their gold stolen, but it was buried in such a position as placed it under the protection of their own communal honour, and the household of their enemy was secured against their active and righteous malice, because the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath belonged to the most powerful Shee of Ireland. It is in circumstances such as these that dangerous alliances are made, and, for the first time in history, the elemental beings invoked bourgeois assistance.