THE KIND OF A GIRL MY LORD WANTS.
She went to her lover, like an honest girl, and told him she would not marry him, but refused to give any reason.
HOW HE WAS KILLED.
Finally, the truth was wrenched out of her, and Mike went and found a shot-gun that had escaped the watchful eye of the royal constabulary, and he got powder, and shot, and old nails, and he lay behind a hedge under a tree for several days. Finally, one day My Lord came riding by, all so gay, and that gun went off, and “subsequent events interested him no more.” There was a hole, a blessed hole, clear through him, and he never was so good a man before, because there was less of him.
Then Mike went to Kitty and told her to be of good cheer, and not be cast down; that the little difference between him and My Lord had been happily settled, and that they would be married as soon as possible. And they were married, and I had the pleasure of taking in my hand the very hand that fired the blessed shot, and of seeing the wife to avenge whose cruel wrongs the shot was fired.
“Vengeance is mine!” is written. In these cases it is well to facilitate the vengeance a trifle by means of a shot-gun. I object to keeping such a man as My Lord out of fire and brimstone a minute. Give the devil his due, and never let the note he holds go to protest.
An immense reward was offered for information leading to the conviction of the noble man who fired the shot, but, though every man, woman and child in a radius of twenty miles knew exactly who did it, no one was found base enough to lodge information against him.
You see the Irish all have daughters and they are all comely, and if shooting lords for such crimes comes to be a rule, the lords will turn their lecherous eyes elsewhere. There are worse things in the world than shot-guns. That particular one should be wreathed with flowers, and hung up in the church of that Parish. There is much moral suasion in a shot-gun loaded with rusty nails.