One day passed, and then another, and the evening of the third day drew near--yet brought no returning Bernard. It is true that on the second day a telegram--the first Jerry had ever received in his life--came bearing the date of Cashel, and containing only the unsigned injunction: _“Don’t be afraid.”_ It is all very well to say this, but Jerry and Linsky read over the brief message many scores of times that day, and still felt themselves very much afraid. Muirisc was stirred by unwonted excitement. In all its history, the village had never resented anything else quite so much as the establishment of a police barrack in its principal street, a dozen years before. The inhabitants had long since grown accustomed to the sight of the sergeant and his four men lounging about the place, and had even admitted them to a kind of conditional friendship, but, none the less, their presence had continued to present itself as an affront to Muirisc. From one year’s end to another, no suspicion of crime had darkened the peaceful fame of the hamlet. They had heard vague stories of grim and violent deeds in other parts of the south and west, as the failure of the potatoes and the greed of the landlords conspired together to drive the peasantry into revolt, but in Muirisc, though she had had her evictions and knew what it was to be hungry, it had occurred to no one to so much as break a window. Yet now, all at once, here were fresh constables brought in from Bantry, with an inspector at their head, and the amazed villagers saw these newcomers, with rifles slung over their short capes, and little round caps cocked to one side on their close-cropped heads, ransacking every nook and cranny of the ancient town in quest of some mysterious thing, the while others spread their search over the ragged rocks and moorland roundabout. And then the astounding report flew from mouth to mouth that Father Jago had read in a Dublin paper that O’Daly was believed to have been murdered. Sure enough, now that they had thought of it, O’Daly had not been seen for two or three days, but until this strange story came from without, no one had given this a thought. He was often away, for days together, on mining and other business, but it was said now that his wife, whom Muirisc still thought of as Mrs. Fergus, had given the alarm, on the ground that if her husband had been going away over night, he would have told her. There was less liking for this lady than ever, when this report started on its rounds.