A magistrate told us a curious story, which recalls a case noted by Sir
Walter Scott, about the detection of a murderer, who lay long in wait
for a certain police sergeant, obnoxious to the "Moonlighters," and
finally shot him dead in the public street of Loughrea, after dark on a
rainy night, as he was returning from the Post-Office on one side of the
street to the Police Barracks on the other. The town and the
neighbouring country were all agog about the matter, but no trace could
be got until the Dublin detectives came down three days after the
murder. It had rained more or less every one of these days, and the
pools of water were still standing in the street, as on the night of the
murder. One of the Dublin officers closely examining the highway saw a
heavy footprint in the coarse mud at the bottom of one of these pools.
He had the water drawn off, and made out clearly, from the print in the
mud, that the brogan worn by the foot which made it had a broken
sole-piece turned over under the foot. By this the murderer was
eventually traced, captured, tried, and found guilty.

Mr. Morphy, I find, is coming down from Dublin to conduct the
prosecution in the case of the Crown against the murderers of
Fitzmaurice, the old man, so brutally slain the other day near Lixnaw,
in the presence of his daughter, for taking and farming a farm given up
by his thriftless brother. "He will find," said one of the company,
"the mischief done in this instance also by prematurely pressing for
evidence. The girl Honora, who saw her father murdered, never ought to
have been subjected to any inquiry at first by any one, least of all by
the local priest. Her first thought inevitably was that if she intimated
who the men were, they would be screened, and she would suffer. Now she
is recovering her self-possession and coming round, and she will tell
the truth."