It is very much to her credit that she did not take the next train home; for she must have thought that her own life was in great danger. But she was a young woman of determination and courage. She made up her mind to discover and bring to the scaffold the men who had done away with Dr. O’Grady. Her suspicions fastened, in the first instance, on Jimmy O’Loughlin and Patsy Devlin. “Mr. O’Loughlin,” she said, when she returned to the hotel after her interview with the housekeeper, “kindly tell me who is the nearest magistrate.” “You haven’t far to go to look for a magistrate, miss, if that’s all you want. I’m one myself.” “I don’t believe you,” said Miss Blow, rudely. “Maybe not,” said Jimmy; “but I’m telling you the truth for all that. Let you go into the Petty Sessions Court to-morrow, and see if I’m not sitting there on the bench; with the police and Mr. Goddard himself, that’s the officer, if he happens to be over from Ballymoy, doing what I bid them, be that same agreeable to them or not; and oftener it’s not, for them police think a lot of themselves. When you see me there administering the law you’ll be sorry for what you’re after saying. It’s the Chairman of the Urban District Council I am, and an ex-officio magistrate, thanks be to God.” “Is there any other magistrate in the neighbourhood?” “There is not; for the R. M. lives away off at Ballymoy, and that’s better than twelve miles from this. There’s ne’er another, only myself and Lord Manton up at the Castle, and he never sits on the bench from one year’s end to another, unless maybe there’s a job on that he’d like to have his finger in.” The title produced its effect on Miss Blow. Earls are much less common in the industrial districts of England than they are in Ireland. The statistics have never been exactly worked out, but there can be little doubt that there are far more earls to every thousand common men in Ireland than in any other part of the three kingdoms. This is not because governments are more generous to the Irish in the matter of titles. The explanation is to be found in the fact that untitled people in Ireland tend to disappear, thinned out by famine, emigration, and various diseases, while the earls survive. In England it is the noblemen who die away, being, as every reader of popular English novels knows, a degraded set of men, addicted to frightful vices, whereas the working men and the great middle class increase rapidly, their morality being of a very superior kind. Curiously enough, the English, though perfectly aware of the facts, respect their debauched earls greatly, on account, it may be supposed, of their rarity. The Irish, on the other hand, think very little of an earl, regard him as in many respects similar to an ordinary man; earls being, as has been said, comparatively common in Ireland. Miss Blow, who had never to her knowledge seen an earl, brightened up at the mention of Lord Manton.