Telegrams in the west of Ireland, are, of course, public property. So are postcards and the contents of the parcels carried by his Majesty’s mails. Lord Manton, whose taste for the details of local gossip was strongly developed, asked what Mr. Red’s telegram was about. “That’s what nobody could tell,” said Dr. O’Grady. “It began with four letters, A.M.B.A., and then came a lot of figures. Father Moroney worked at it for the best part of two hours, with the help of a Latin dictionary, but he could make no more out of it than I could myself.” “Cipher,” said Lord Manton; “probably quite a simple cipher if you’d known how to go about reading it.” “At the end of the week, another packing-case arrived, carriage paid from London. It was as big as any of the first lot. Byrne and I went up to the station to see it before Jimmy O’Loughlin carted it down to Rosivera. He seemed to think that it was another piano. Since then nothing of any sort has happened, and the people have pretty well given over talking about the man.” Lord Manton yawned. Like the other inhabitants of Clonmore he was beginning to get tired of Mr. Red and his affairs. A stranger is only interesting when there are things about him which can be found out. If his affairs are public property he becomes commonplace and dull. If, on the other hand, it is manifestly impossible to discover anything about him, if he sends his telegrams in cipher, employs a remarkably taciturn servant to do his marketing, and never appears in public himself, he becomes in time quite as tiresome as the man who has no secrets at all. “Any other news about the place?” asked Lord Manton. “You needn’t mention Jimmy O’Loughlin’s wife’s baby. Byrne told me about it.” “It’s the tenth,” said Dr. O’Grady, “the tenth boy.” “So I believe.” “Well, there’s nothing else, except the election of the inspector of sheep dipping. I needn’t tell you that there’s been plenty of talk about that.” “So I gathered,” said Lord Manton, “from the number of candidates for the post who wrote to me asking me to back them up. I think there were eleven of them.” “I hear that you supported Patsy Devlin, the smith. He’s a drunken blackguard.”