Here he was interrupted by a volley of execrations and curses, mingled with “stag, informer, thraithor to the thrue cause!” which, for some time, compelled him to be silent.
“You may curse,” continued Mat; “but it's too late now to abscond the truth--the _sum_ of my wickedness and folly is worked out, and you see the _answer_. God forgive me, many a young crathur I enticed into the _Ribbon_ business, and now it's to ind in _Hemp_. Obey the law; or, if you don't you will find a _lex talionis_ the construction of which is, that if a man burns or murdhers he won't miss hanging; take warning by me--by us all; for, although I take God to witness that I was not at the perpetration of the crime that I'm to be suspinded for, yet I often connived, when I might have superseded the carrying of such intuitions into effectuality. I die in pace wid all the world, save an' except the Findramore people, whom, may the maledictionary execration of a dying man follow into eternal infinity! My manuscription of conic sections--” Here an extraordinary buz commenced among the crowd, which rose gradually into a shout of wild, astounding exultation. The sheriff followed the eyes of the multitude, and perceived a horseman dashing with breathless fury up towards the scene of execution. He carried and waved a white handkerchief on the end of a rod, and made signals with his hat to stop the execution. He arrived, and brought a full pardon for Mat, and a commutation of sentence to transportation for life for the other two. What became of Mat I know not; but in Findramore he never dared to appear, as certain death would have been the consequence of his not dying _game_. With respect to Barny Brady, who kept the shebeen, and was the principal evidence against those who were concerned in this outrage, he was compelled to enact an _ex tempore_ death in less than a month afterwards; having been found dead, with a slip of paper in his mouth, inscribed--“This is the fate of all Informers.”
The Author, in order to satisfy his readers that the character of Mat Kavanagh as a hedge schoolmaster is not by any means overdrawn, begs to subjoin (verbatim) the following authentic production of one, which will sufficiently explain itself, and give an excellent notion of the mortal feuds and jealousies which subsist between persons of this class:--