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Maybe he'd change his mind if he saw them." Furlong, irritated by his composure, seized his arm and led him to the window. A great shout was set up by the savages below, on beholding him, and their horrible weapons gleamed in the morning sun with an undulating movement.

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See, colonel, I don't want you to die, for the shelter you gave little Una," said Furlong in his ear. "I can't save you except you draw the straws: that one wid the joint in the end is the long one: pull it out, and yer all right."

The old gentleman seemed bewildered, as if he scarcely heard the voice; he continued looking straight down upon the death so near him.

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"D'ye hear?" said the blacksmith, getting angry, and clutching his arm again. Maybe it's thinkin' ye'll be saved any other way ye are, when the Republic's victorious in every whole place; an' I saw the captin' fall wid me own eyes, in the battle of Ross."

Then indeed the father turned a quick startled look upon the speaker, having caught his meaning too well: the instant after he fell heavily on the floor.

"Troth an' he's dead," said Myles, after a minute's examination; "dead without the pikes at all.”

It was a check on their insensate fury for the moment; it turned the tide a little. The old body-servant was allowed to raise his master, and lay him on a couch; and, while chafing his hands and mourning over him-regardless of his own probable fate in a few minutes there was a commotion at the door of the gallery, and an authoritative voice.

"What is all this? I take possession of the Castle in the name of the nation. Turn out those fellows, Furlong. Where is Colonel Butler ?"

They dropped aside before the priest and his whip, when pistols

would not have overawed them, and showed the prostrate form of the old gentleman.

"Not in time to save your friend, I'm sorry to say, Mr. Kavanagh; wish we were. There's too much of this sort of thing going on. Get out of this, ye pack of thieves!" for they were breaking open the cases of curiosities. He laid about him with his riding-whip zealously, and drove the armed men out of the gallery. "As sure as my name's Father Pat Costello, I'll make ye behave yourselves!"

Fergus was meanwhile down on his knees, trying to open a vein in the arm whose sleeve he had cut up. His dagger was a clumsy lancet, and inflicted a wound much larger than he desired; but with what joy he hailed the first few drops of blood slowly oozing -then flowing! To save the life of Evelyn's father he gladly risked his own.

With all his authoritativeness, and the superstitious respect paid to his office, the priest had much trouble in turning the insurgents from their fatal purposes towards the prisoners. It was only by his solemn promise to bring them before "the tribunal of the People," and let them be dealt with at the Windmill camp, that he succeeded; and, knowing the necessity of action for the restless mass, he split them into parties, and sent them on various enterprises, chiefly to aid their brethren in Wexford and Enniscorthy; on which two points the British troops were converging now.

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CHAPTER LIII.

THE LAST OF THE STORM.

LONG did Captain Gerald lie between life and death; his wounds were desperate, and strength greater than his might have leaked away through them beyond remedy. All old Jug's skill in simples was put in exercise: the herbs of the field were ransacked for poultices and healing lotions and strengthening draughts. Freney supplied them with food, somehow: fowls and rude joints of meat from the rebel commissariat, which commissariat, in brief, consisted of seizing whatever they could lay their hands on anywhere. The wounded officer was brought to the mouth of the cave, and laid in the sunshine and fresh air for hours daily. Old Jug had great faith in the curative properties of sunshine and fresh air. As he grew better, and could think consecutively, he became most restless, and impatient of his confinement, and anxious for news of what was going on abroad.

"Sure it's a fine sign to have you so cross, mavourneen,” said the old woman one day, when he attempted a sort of apology for some petulance. "I'd a dale sooner have you bate me itself, than be lyin' white an' patient, till I'd think the sperit was dead intirely in ye; an' who in the world wud ye be cross wid, if 'twasn't yer ould foster-mother?"

He had news enough a day or two after. Bands of the broken rebels came flying to the glen for safety, with stories of the most utter rout and dispersion. The battle of Vinegar Hill had been fought, where thirteen thousand troops under General Lake had concentrated themselves about the insurgents' head-quarters, forced all their positions, and must have destroyed and taken prisoners their whole army, but for a mistake on the part of a brigadier, who

left the country open towards Wexford; thus allowing large numbers to escape by what was called after him "Needham's Gap." Then came fresh devastation of the country, not now by the insurgents, but by the soldiers, especially the Hessians. A house at Enniscorthy which had been used as a rebel hospital was set on fire, and many sick and wounded perished in its ruins.

Not merely the dispersed rebels and their families came flying to the glen, but farmers and others living in the neighbourhood, who dreaded unspeakably the indiscriminate vengeance of the military. Captain Gerald had learned lessons in his sickness and weakness; among others, was some sympathy for the people, and some knowledge of the oppressions which had helped to drive them to the great crime of insurrection. They cleaved to him now, in their wretchedness and despair, these miserable refugees. He offered to go and make terms for them, if possible. The idea was received with enthusiastic joy. A thousand blessings followed him as the turf-creel-again his chariot-passed out of the glen, and was directed by Freney as charioteer towards the nearest outpost of the troops. This was at the very village of Doon itself; and had it not been a place where he was so well known, the captain would have stood a good chance of being shot on his charitable errand; the martial law most frequently in operation being, “Shoot a man first, and inquire his crime afterwards."

But the only terms he could gain for the rebels in the glen were that, if they surrendered unconditionally, they should be indulged with a trial for their lives. His old foster-mother, Freney, and the Philomath, to whose care he owed his cure, were to get special protections; afterwards popularly called "Cornys," from a contraction of the name of the existent lord-lieutenant, Marquis Cornwallis. We may here mention that Mr. O'Doherty, being searched by a picket of zealous yeomen, as he came into Doon under the ægis of his "protection," very nearly lost his life on account of the

following verse belonging to his ballad, found scribbled in a Red-a-mad-aisy" in one of his pockets:

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:-

"The streets of England were left quite naked
Of all its army, both foot and horse;
The Highlands of Scotland were left unguarded;
Likewise the Hessians the seas they crossed;
To the Windmill Hill of Enniscorthy

The British fencibles they flew like deers;
And our ranks were tattered and sorely scattered
For loss of Kyan and his Shelmaliers." *

And though this production attained much popularity, its author retained such a lively sense of the risks he had run concerning it, that he never claimed its honours, but addicted himself solely to prose for the remainder of his days.

Old Jug, having seen her foster-son safe at Doon Castle, and reunited to his father, set off with her "protection" to seek for her real son, of whom she had not heard since the battle of Ross. But how many scores of men disappeared in the "Croppy War" without friends or relatives ever knowing more than the bare fact of disappearance!

The old woman sought for Myles in vain; and returned emptyhanded to the forge, where Freney had already found shelter.

"I can't find a bit of him," she said, lighting her pipe by the primitive operation of crushing part of a burning turf into its bowl. "I suppose he's killed. Sure he did his best to be killed, anyhow."

Freney, who expected no other result, only paused in his nailmaking to cross himself as he said—“Then if that's the way, the heavens be his bed! Amin."

The old woman uttered a sort of grunt, as her assent to the

* A regiment of rebels from the sea-coast district thus called, armed with long muskets, and commanded by one Charles Kyan.