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He could see that the quarrel was not entirely one between Protestant and Catholic as it used to be, but still he could not get it out of his mind, but that the old causes were producing in a different way their old effects. Whiteboys, Terryalts, Ribbonmen, Repeaters, Physical-Forcemen, Fenians, Home-Rulers, Professors of Dynamite, and American-Irish, were, to his thinking, all the same.
"What!" she exclaimed, with evident symptoms of alarm and vexation, "Frank M'Carthy!" and, as she spoke, the remarkable conversation which she had had with Mogue Moylan, and the information he had given her with respect to M'Carthy's connection with the Whiteboys, instantly flashed upon her, accompanied now by a strong conviction of its truth. "Explain yourself, Mr.
"That's precisely what I am coming to," replied Alick; "the fact was that the martial magistrate, who, I believe in my soul, lay shivering with terror on his bed the whole previous part of the night, on hearing our dialogue with the Whiteboys, and the report of the fire-arms, altogether disappeared, and it was not until two or three searches had been made for him, that he was discovered squatted three double in the coalhole.
He is a regular conspiracy hunter, and were it not that he is now awfully afraid of these Whiteboys, and naturally cowardly and easily frightened, I think he would be the plague of government as well as the country." It would indeed, be extremely difficult to find a family so resolute and full of natural courage, and consequently so incapable of intimidation, as that of our friend the proctor.
Julia on hearing of this attack and its object, felt her mind involved in doubt and embarrassment. She could not reconcile the desire of the Whiteboys to injure M'Carthy, with the fact of his having, by his own admission, spent the night among them. Or what if the attack was a mere excuse to prevent any suspicion of his connection with them at all?
He then gave her a brief account of the rencounter he had with the Whiteboys, and alluded to the unknown but friendly individual who had put him on his guard. "I knew it," she exclaimed, "I knew it; I couldn't mistake the look that passed between them.
This person, with a case of pistols in his breast, compels him, as it were, to put himself under his protection; and he conducts him into a remote isolated shebeen-house, where, no doubt, there is a meeting of Whiteboys every night in the week.
He was as communicative as hosts usually are: the crops and the markets, the price of beasts at last Castle Dermot fair, the last story about the vicar, and the last joke of Father Hogan the priest; how the Whiteboys had burned Squire Scanlan's ricks, and the highwaymen had been beaten off in their attack upon Sir Thomas's house; who was to hunt the Kilkenny hounds next season, and the wonderful run entirely they had last March; what troops were in the town, and how Miss Biddy Toole had run off with Ensign Mullins: all the news of sport, assize, and quarter-sessions were detailed by this worthy chronicler of small-beer, who wondered that my honour hadn't heard of them in England, or in foreign parts, where he seemed to think the world was as interested as he was about the doings of Kilkenny and Carlow.
"Then you have told me a falsehood with respect to his fatigue?" "He put me up to it, miss; and bid me say it; howandever my mind wasn't aisy undher it; and now you know the truth." "And does he blacken his face as well as the other Whiteboys?" "That hurt or harm may never come near me but he does that same; I have it from them that seen him and knew him, in spite o' black face an' all."
The Whiteboys of the eighteenth century reappeared as "Whitefeet," and other secret associations, under grotesque names, enforced their decrees by wholesale murder, burglary, arson, savage assaults, destruction of property, and mutilation of cattle.
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