The production was formally signed
with Dwyer's name, and the postscript
contained a strict injunction of secrecy,
asserting that if it were ascertained that
such an epistle had been despatched from
such a quarter, it would be attended with
the total ruin of the writer.

It is true that Dwyer, many years after,
when this letter came to light, alleged it to
be a forgery, an assertion whose truth,
even to his dying hour, and long after he
had apparently ceased to feel the lash of
public scorn, he continued obstinately to
maintain. Indeed this matter is full of
mystery, for, revenge alone excepted,
which I believe, in such minds as Dwyer's,
seldom overcomes the sense of interest,
the only intelligible motive which could
have prompted him to such an act was the
hope that since he had, through young
O'Mara's interest, procured from the
colonel a lease of a small farm upon the
terms which he had originally stipulated,
he might prosecute his plan touching the
property of Martin Heathcote, rendering
his daughter's hand free by the removal of
young O'Mara. This appears to me too
complicated a plan of villany to have
entered the mind even of such a man as