Untitled

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 248, 1 February 1878, Page 3

It is not easy to determine the stage at which a secret conspiracy can be most effectually struck. A singular incident showed the authorities in Dublin Castle that they had not many moments to lose. On the machine-room staff of the Irish People was a man named Pierce Nagle, a great favourite aud confidential agent, or courier, of Mr. Stephens. For more than a year Nagle had been in the secret pay of the Government, and was supplying daily information against the Fenian chiefs. One day an envoy arrived from the South Tipperary Bs, and received from Mr. Stephens a despatch of the utmost secrecy and importance, with which lie was lo return instantly to Clonmcl. The missive he bore was to be read for the centres there, and then destroyed. The envoy got rather overpowered with " refreshment " in the afternoon, and went to sleep on a bench in the machine-room. Nagle, coming in, saw him, and rightly guessed he was "the Captain." He quietly turned the pockets of the sleeper inside out, and took from him the precious document. Some days elapsed before he was able to find an opportunity for safely hapding it over to the police. Once in their possession, the importance of that missive was fully recognised. Before many hours it was in the council chamber of Dublin Castle. A glance at its content showed Lord' Wodehouse that he must strike without further hesitation, which he did. —JS T etv Ireland. Theke is always one bright thought in our minds, when all the rest are dark. There is one thought out of which a moderately cheerful man can always make some satisfactory sunshine, if not a sufficiency of it. It is the thought of the bright, populous heaven. There is joy there at least, if there is joy nowhere else. There is true service of God there, however poor and interested the love of Him may be on earth. Multitudes are abounding in the golden light there, even if they that rejoice on earth be few,;. At this hour it is all going on, so near us that we cannot be hopelessly unhappy with so much happiness so near. Yet its nearness makes us wistful. Then let us think that there arc multitudes in heaven to-day who are there because of kind actions; many arc there for doin" them, many for having had them done to them.—lht7ter Fai/er,