Every avenue and road leading to it however, was watched, with a hope that if he escaped elsewhere, they might shoot him down from, behind a hedge.
The condition of all secret and illegal societies in Ireland is, indeed, shocking and most detestable, when contemplated from any point of view whatsoever.

In every one of them--that is, in every local body or branch of such conspiracy--there is a darker and more secret class, comparatively few in number, who undertake to organize the commission of crimes and outrages; and who, when they are controlled by the peaceably-disposed and enemies to bloodshed, always fall back upon this private and blood-stained clique, who are always willing to execute their sanguinary behests, as it were, _con amore_.

In other cases, however, as we have stated before, even the virtuous and reluctant are often compelled, by the dark and stern decrees of these desperate ruffians, to perpetrate crimes from which they revolt.

It was, therefore, in pursuance of these abominable principles that the arrangements for M'Carthy's murder were made on the night in question.
Jerry Joyce perceiving, as he had feared, that M'Carthy did not return to dinner, at once came to the determination that he would go to Finnerty's, where, from his connection with Whiteboyism, he knew that a meeting of them was to be held on that night.

He accordingly armed himself with a ease of pistols, which he had been allowed to keep for the preservation of his master's family and premises, in case they should be attacked.