The Executive offered large rewards for such information as might lead to the apprehension and conviction of the offenders. Though the required knowledge was scattered among hundreds of the peasantry--hunger-stricken men, who often wanted even salt to their potatoes--not one was found to enrich himself by the "blood-money." Two descriptions of persons are held in utter hatred and contempt in Ireland;--the man who, for lucre, turns from the ancient faith of his fathers, and he who becomes a "stag" (informer) to save his own neck, or gain the wages of treachery. Of the two, the informer is considered more harshly than the apostate, who may repent, and in the fulness of time return (even on his death-bed) to the faith he has forsaken; but once that a man becomes a traitor to his colleagues, he does what cannot be undone by any contrition, and may be punished, but cannot be atoned for by Death. It is a strange condition of society, lamented by O'Connell, Sheil, and others, that, in any cases, while the Irish peasantry would pity, and even shield the murderer, (finding or making excuses for his crime,) they will not, they cannot pardon or excuse the informer.
Up to this time, Cussen had escaped suspicion of any participation in the Whiteboy proceedings. Latterly, whether from distaste for the low companionship into which he had fallen, or from a desire to elude suspicion, he had made a point of frequenting society of a better order. On one of these occasions, while he was spending the evening at the house of Mr. F. Drew, Drewscourt, near Charleville,(in which, by the way, the writer of these Sketches was born,) the affair of Churchtown became a subject of conversation. Cussen took no part in the dialogue, but when all had retired, except Mr. Drew--a very shrewd but eccentric man--he spoke freely upon the subject, and having drank rather more than was good for him, got thrown off his guard so much as, in the excitement of the moment, to give a minute account of everything which had passed on the memorable night in question. With fearful energy he narrated all the details, and at the close, when he told how the mutilated body of the sergeant had been cast into the flames,