may save a house as a cat may save a derelict ship. Then the Sheriff
must "walk" over the whole holding. All this takes time. There was an
unobtrusive search for arms too going on all the time. Three ramrods
were found hidden in a straw-bed--two of which showed signs of recent
use. But the guns had vanished. An officer told me that not long ago two
revolvers were found in a corner of the thatch of a house; but the
cartridges for them were only some time afterwards discovered neatly
packed away in the top of a bedroom wall. It is not the ownership of
these arms, it is the careful concealment of them which indicates
sinister intent. One of the constables brought out three "Moonlighters'
swords" found hidden away in the house. One of these Colonel Turner
showed me. It was a reversal of the Scriptural injunction, being a
ploughshare beaten into a weapon, and a very nasty weapon of offence,
one end of it sharpened for an ugly thrust, the other fashioned into
quite a fair grip. While I was examining this trophy there was a stir,
and presently two of the gentlemen who had passed us on Mr. Shee's car
came rather suddenly out of the house in company with two or three
constables.

They were representatives, they said, of the Press, and as such desired
to be allowed to remain. Colonel Turner replied that this could not be,
and, in fact, no one had been suffered to enter the house except the
law-officers, the agent, and the constables. So the representatives of
the Press were obliged to pass outside of the lines, one of the
constables declaring that they had got into the house through a hole in
the back wall!

Shortly after this incident there arose a considerable noise of groaning
and shouting from the hill-side beyond the highway, and presently a
number of people, women and children predominating, appeared coming down