“What other, Bartle?”

“The black list.  An’ now I have nothin’ more to say except that if there’s anything on your mind that wants absolution, look to it.”

We must now pause for a moment to observe upon that which we suppose the sagacity of the reader has already discovered—­that is, the connection between what has occurred in Flanagan’s lodge, and the last dialogue which took place between Nogher and Connor O’Donovan.  It is evident that Nogher had spirits at work for the purpose both of watching and contravening all Flanagan’s plans, and, if possible, of drawing him into some position which might justify the “few friends,” as he termed them, first in disgracing him, and afterwards of settling their account ultimately with a man whom they wished to blacken, as dangerous to the society of which they were members.  The curse, however, of these secret confederacies, and indeed of ribbonism in general, is, that the savage principle of personal vengeance is transferred from the nocturnal assault, or the midday assassination, which may be directed against religious or political enemies, to the private bickerings and petty jealousies that must necessarily occur in a combination of ignorant and bigoted men, whose passions are guided by no principle but one of practical cruelty.  This explains, as we have just put it, and justly put it, the incredible number of murders which are committed in this unhappy country, under the name of way-layings and midnight attacks, where the offence that caused them cannot be traced by society at large, although it is an incontrovertible fact, that to all those who are connected with ribbonism, in its varied phases, it often happens that the projection of such murders is known for weeks before they are perpetrated.  The wretched assassin who murders a man that has never offended him personally, and who suffers himself to become the instrument of executing the hatred which originates from a principle of general enmity again a class, will not be likely, once his hands are stained with blood, to spare any one who may, by direct personal injury, incur his resentment.  Every such offence, where secret societies are concerned, is made a matter of personal feeling and trial of strength between factions, and of course a similar spirit is superinduced among persons of the same creed and principles to that which actuates them against those who differ from them in politics and religion.  It is true that the occurrence of murders of this character has been referred to as a proof that secret societies are not founded or conducted upon a spirit of religious rancor; but such an assertion is, in some cases, the result of gross ignorance, and, in many more, of far grosser dishonesty.  Their murdering each other is not at all a proof of any such thing, but it, is a proof, as we have said, that their habit of taking away human life, and shedding human blood upon slight grounds or political feelings, follows them from their