RIDGEWAY

In the dark, English crucible of seven hundred years of famine, fire and sword, the children of Ireland have been tested to an intensity unknown to the annals of any other people. From the days of the second Henry down to those of the last of the Georges, every device that human ingenuity could encompass or the most diabolical spirit entertain, was brought to bear upon them, not only with a view to insuring their speedy degradation, but with the further design of accomplishing ultimately the utter extinction of their race. Yet notwithstanding that confiscation, exile and death, have been their bitter portion for ages—notwithstanding that their altars, their literature and their flag have been trampled in the dust, beneath the iron heel of the invader, the pure, crimson ore of their nationality and patriotism still flashes and scintillates before the world; while the fierce heart of “Brien of the Cow Tax,” bounding in each and every of them as of yore, yearns for yet another Clontarf, when hoarse with the pent-up vengeance of centuries, they shall burst like unlaired tigers upon their ancient, and implacable enemy, and, with one, long, wild cry, hurl her bloody and broken from their shores forever.

Had England been simply actuated by a chivalrous spirit of conquest, alone, or moved by a desire to blend the sister islands into one harmonious whole, even then her descent upon Ireland could not be justified in any degree whatever. Ireland had been her Alma Mater. According to the venerable Bode and others, her noble and second rank flocked thither in the seventh century, where they were “hospitably received and educated, and furnished with books without fee or reward.” Even at the present moment, the Irish or Celtic tongue is the only key to her remote antiquities and ancient nomenclature. The distinguished Lhuyd, in his Archaelogia Britannica, and the celebrated Leibnitz himself, place this latter beyond any possible shadow of doubt. Scarcely a ruined fane or classic pile of any remote date within her borders but is identified with the name of some eminent Irish missionary long since passed away. What would Oxford have been without Joannes Erigena, or Cambridge, deprived of the celebrated Irish monk that stood by the first stone laid in its foundation? The fact is every impartial writer, from the “father of English history” down to the present day, admits, that in the early ages, when darkness brooded over the surrounding nations, Ireland, learned, philanthropic and chivalrous, blazed a very conflagration on the ocean, and stretched forth her jewelled and generous hand to poor, benighted England, and fostered, in addition, the intellectual infancy of Germany, France and Switzerland, as well as the early civilization of regions more remote still. Then it was that the milk and honey of her ancient tongue and lore flowed out from her in rivers to wash the stains from the soul and brow of the stolid and unintellectual Saxon. Then it was, that her very zone gave way in her eagerness to pluck his Pagan life from gloom, and wed her day unto his night. But what of all this now?—The sin that is “worse than witchcraft” is upon him! His hands are stained with innocent blood! He has spurned his benefactress with the foot of Nero, “removed her candlestick”, and left her in hunger, cold and darkness upon her own hearthstone.

Had not Ireland, at the time of the invasion, been cut up through the fierce pride and petty jealousies of her rulers, the English could never have effected a permanent footing upon her shores. Contemptible in numbers, shipping and appointments, the concentrated opposition of even a few petty chiefs could have scattered them to the winds, or sent them “howling to their gods”. But, wanting in that homogeneity without which a nation must always remain powerless, the invasion of the territory of one individual ruler was often regarded as a matter of no very grave importance to those who were not his immediate subjects; so that from this cause, as well as from, the unhappy dissentions which harrassed the country at the period, the new colony found the means of establishing themselves upon the eastern borders of the island, and of possessing themselves of some of the walled towns, which they subsequently turned to such good account in fortifying themselves against surprise and baffling the pursuit of the natives, when worsted in the open field.

Whether the subtle influences of a common nationality moved Pope Adrian the Fourth—who was an Englishman named Nicholas Breakspear,—to issue the famous Bull granting Ireland to his fellow countryman, Henry the Second of England, or whether, as it has been alleged, no such Bull was ever issued, and that the one still extant is a forgery, it matters but little now. The Pope’s claims extended to the spiritual jurisdiction of Ireland only; and even had he granted the Bull in question, and assumed the right of conveying the whole island to the English king, the transfer was obtained under false pretenses for, from the very wording of the document itself, it is palpable that Henry led the Sovereign Pontiff, to believe that Ireland was sunk in the grossest ignorance and superstition, and that, in making a descent upon it, he had only the glory and honor of the Church in view. So terrible a distortion of the facts of the case on his part, necessarily rendered all action based upon his statement morally invalid at least; and thus it is, that even those who have confidence in the genuineness of this Bull, regard it as utterly worthless, and at not all admissable into any pleadings which ingenious English politicians may choose to advance on the subject.

So inveterate the hostility that manifested itself on the part of the Irish towards the invader from the moment that his foul and sacrilegious foot first desecrated their soil, a reign of terror was at once inaugurated in the vicinage of his camp or stronghold, by those chieftains with whom he came into more immediate contact, and upon whose territories he more directly impinged. In the track of both peoples, “death follows like a squire.” Neither truce nor oath was kept by the English; while their fiery adversaries, necessarily stung to frenzy at the presence of yet another invader in their midst, made sudden reprisals in a manner so unexpected and daring, that the laws of the hour like those of Draco, were literally written in blood. While the dash and chivalry of the Irish prevented them from adopting the stealthy dagger of the assassin, and prompted them rather, to bold and open deeds of death, the enactments of “The Pale” as the English patch or district was termed, were absolutely of a character the most demonical. According to their provisions, the murder of an Irish man or woman was no offence whatever; while the slaughter of a native who had made submission to the Pale, was visited with a slight fine only—not for the crime per se, but for the murderer’s having deprived the king of a servant. From this it can be easily perceived, that a cowardly system of warfare obtained on the part of the English, which, were it not for the quick eye and fierce agility of the inhabitants, would soon have resulted in their total annihilation.

This foul and dastardly system of assassination was but simply a leading expression of the bastard nationality of the invader. Not one, single drop of proud, pure blood coursed through his veins. His degraded country had been in turn the mistress of the Roman, the Saxon, the Dane and the Norman, and he was the hybrid offspring of her incontinence. Consequently, he had neither a history nor a past of his own, calculated to prompt even one exalted aspiration. He was a mongrel of the most inveterate character, and was therefore, and inevitably, treacherous, cowardly; and cunning. Not so the brave sons of the land he so ardently coveted. Ere the mighty gnomon of “The Great Pyramid” had thrown its gigantic shadow o’er the red dial of the desert, they had filled the long gallery of a glorious past with an array of portraits, the most superb presented by antiquity. Before the Vocal Memnon poured forth his hidden melody at sunrise, or “The City of a Hundred Gates” had sent forth her chariots to battle, they had a local habitation and a name, and had stamped their impress upon many a shore. No people in existence, to-day, can look back to an origin more remote or clearly traceable through a countless lapse of ages than the Irish: and hence it was, that at the period of the Anglo-Norman descent upon their borders, the chivalry of a stupendous past was upon them: and having its traditions and its glories to maintain and emulate, and being, besides, inspired by the pure and unadulterated crimson tide that had flowed in one uninterrupted stream through their fiery veins for the space of two thousand years previously, they shrank from the treacherous and dastardly system of assassination introduced by the ignoble and cowardly Saxon, and struck only to the dread music of their own war cry.

Still, although in detail hostile to the invader, no great, united effort appears to have been made to rout him out root and branch, until he had become so powerful as to make any attack upon him a matter of the most serious moment, and had, in addition, enlarged his borders through sundry reinforcements from his own shores. The few more purely Norman leaders that were inspired with some desire at least for a more honorable mode of warfare, were utterly powerless among the overwhelming throng of their followers who had been long brutalized on the other side of the channel. In this connection the proud, revengeful and chivalrous natives were had at a sad disadvantage; for then, as to-day, they were characterized by a spirit of knight-errantry, which disdained to take an enemy unawares.

As an evidence that Henry had the spiritual welfare only of the people of Ireland at heart, and that the building up of the Church there was his sole object, no sooner did he land in that country, than he parcelled out the entire island among ten Englishmen—Earl Strongbow, Robert Fitzstephens, Miles de Cogan, Philip Bruce, Sir Hugh de Lacy, Sir John de Courcy, William Burk Fitz Andelm, Sir Thomas de Clare, Otho de Grandison and Robert le Poer. At one sweep, in so far as a royal grant could go, he confiscated every foot of land from Cape Clear to the Giant’s Causeway, denied the right of the inhabitants to a single square yard of their native soil, and made the whole country a present to the persons just named. Perhaps history does not record another such outrageous and infamous act, and one so antagonistic to every principle of right and justice. Had there been a preceding series of expensive and bloody wars between both countries, in which Ireland, after years of fruitless resistance, fell at last beneath the yoke of the conqueror, it could be readily understood, that the victor would seek to indemnify himself for his losses, on terms the most exacting and relentless if you will; but in the case under consideration, no animosity existed between the two nations until the ruler of one, without even a shadow of provocation on the part of the inhabitants of the other, made a deliberate descent upon them, and ignoring the benefits conferred gratuitously by them, previously, on his own ungrateful land, subjected them to every barbarity and wrong known to the history of crime.

For upwards of four hundred years of the English occupation—that is, from the landing of Strongbow down to the period of James the First, there was no legal redress for the plunder or murder of an Irishman, by any of the invaders, or for the violation of his wife or daughter. The laws of the Pale, enacted under the sanction of the King and the people of England, subsidized, in effect, a horde of ruthless assassins and robbers, with a view to striking terror to the hearts of the natives, and driving them into a recognition of the right of the usurper to rule over them, and dispose as he saw fit of their property and persons. This right, however, was never conceded in even the most remote degree; for, notwithstanding that the colony of foreign spears and battle-axes waxed stronger daily, the Irish element, disunited though it was, fought it constantly. True, that an occasional lull characterized the tempest as it swept and eddied through each successive generation; but never did Ireland assume the yoke of the oppressor voluntarily, or bow, for even a single moment, in meek submission to his unauthorized sway.

It would require volumes to recount a tithe of the frightful atrocities practiced by the invaders upon the rightful and unoffending owners of the soil during the long period just referred to, and especially towards its close, when that lewd monster, Elizabeth, disgraced her sex and the age. No language can describe adequately the various diabolical modes of extermination practiced against all those who refused to bow the knee and kiss the English rod. No code of laws ever enacted in even the most barbarous age of the world, could compare in fiendish cruelty with the early penal enactments of the Pale—so forcibly supplemented in after years by the perjured “Dutch boor” and the inhuman Georges. The foul fiend himself could not have devised laws more diabolical in their character or destructive in their application. So close were their meshes and sweeping their folds, that the possibility of escape was obviously out of the question; as their victim was met and entangled at every turn, until at last the fatal blow descended, and the unequal contest was ended. But more infamous and unjustifiable still, when “the foul invader” found himself occasionally unable to cope successfully with his brave and chivalrous antagonists, he had recourse to a darker and deeper treachery than even that which characterized the stealthy and unexpected stroke of his midnight dagger. He adopted the guise of friendship; and professing to forget the past, lured into his power with festive blandishments the chiefs of many a noble following, whom he dared not meet in open fight, but who, at a given signal, and while the brimming goblet circled through the feast, were suddenly set upon and foully murdered ere they could draw a dagger or leap to their feet. In corroboration of this assertion, we have only to refer to Mullaghmast, where a deed of this description was perpetrated; and of a character so cruel and dastardly, that the names of those concerned in the inhuman plot are now desecrated by every individual raised above the brute, or inspired with the hope of heaven.

Nor was there any mode of propitiating the satanic spirit which seemed to actuate the English against their opponents, from the first moment that they set their foot upon Irish soil; for, when, in the lapse of years, a portion of the inhabitants in the vicinity of the Pale, professed their readiness to conform to the manners, laws and customs of the invader, their overtures were rejected, and they were still held at the point of the sword, as “the Irish enemy,” and denied the protection of the laws that they were ready to obey. In short, every move of the English, established beyond any possibility of doubt, that their sole object was the utter and complete extirpation of the natives, and the subsequent establishment upon their conquered shores of a dynasty from which every drop of pure, Celtic blood should be excluded forever.

But that day never arrived, and with God’s help never shall. However she might have suffered or failed through an occasional traitor, Ireland, as a whole, fought against English usurpation from the moment that she became aware of its ultimate aims, and felt its growing power within her borders. There was, besides, in the two races, those opposites of character—those natural antagonisms which repelled each other with a force and vehemence not to be neutralized or unified by any process within the reach of even the most humane or astute ruler. They were too different peoples, with habits of thought, moral perceptions, and ideas of chivalry at total variance with each other as entertained by them individually. The great bulk of the English colony was composed of unprincipled freebooters and degraded Saxon serfs; the Conqueror having, a century previously, turned the masses of the English into swine-herds, banished their language from court, and reduced them to a condition of the most abject slavery. Hence their stolid brutality, the low plane of their intelligence, and their systematic murders. But, how different the condition of the Irish in this respect. Far ages previous, both learning, refinement, and the chivalrous use of arms, pervaded their shores. Evidences of the truth of this assertion lie scattered around us in every direction. Girald Barry—the English Cambrensis, William Camden, Archbishop Usher, Vallancey, Lord Lyttleton, and a host of others, all bear witness to the profound learning and noble chivalry of the Irish from the earliest periods; while the various educational institutions throughout the continent, founded shortly after the introduction of Christianity into Ireland, establish, upon a basis the most immovable, the truth of an assertion made by one of the authors just mentioned, namely, that “most of the lights that illumined those times of thick darkness proceeded out of Ireland”. As may be presumed, then, a people so refined and chivalrous—so sensitive to all that was noble and elevated—a people who, as in the case of Alfred, had educated the very kings of the invaders, as well as plucked their subjects from Paganism, were averse to meeting the usurper on his own plane of warfare, and that consequently, the very pride and dignity of their arms walled in, as it were, the tyrant from any of those cold-blooded and dastardly atrocities which so disfigured his own career.

Notwithstanding that, after four hundred and twenty years of outlawry the most cruel and unrelenting, the Irish were, (12th James I. 1614.) at last, admitted within the pale of English law, and recognized nominally as subjects at least, so long had they been subjected to the grinding heel of oppression, and the baneful influences of continuous warfare, and so long, also, had the usurper been accustomed to treat them as enemies, that this recognition of their claims upon humanity availed them but very little. Under the new regime, their freedom was merely technical only; for now the terrible ban of the Reformation, intensified by the cruel spirit evinced throughout the whole of Elizabeth’s infamous reign, was upon them, and their persecution, which had so long been regarded as a matter of course, experienced but little diminution through the attempted toleration of her weak and pedantic successor. Still, frightful and unprecedented as was the ordeal through which they had passed, they preserved their nationality, and clung to their traditions, hoping one day to rid themselves of their oppressors, as they had already done in the case of the Danes; and in this way has the case stood between both parties up to the present hour.

Although long previous to the Reformation, the atrocities practiced upon Catholic Ireland by Catholic England were of a character the most revolting, and although the murderous hand of the invader was never stayed by the knowledge or conviction, that both parties professed a common creed and knelt at a common altar, yet the intensity of the sufferings of the Irish, or what may be termed their studious, refined, and systematic persecution, began with the civilisation of Elizabeth. The new creed of the three preceding reigns had not, up to that period, acquired sufficient strength to exert its deadliest influence against the ancient faith of the people, or to be introduced as a new agency of oppression in the case of Ireland; but now, no sooner had the “Virgin Queen” ascended the throne, than the heart of the tigress leaped within her; and, breaking loose from every restraint, human and divine, she at once pounced upon the unfortunate Irish, and sought to bury her merciless fangs, with one deadly and final crash, in their already bleeding and lacerated vitals. The coarse, cruel fibre of an apostate and libertine father, and the impure blood of a lewd mother, had done their work in her case. From the first to the last moment of her reign, she combined the courtesan with the assassin. She was the murderer of Essex, said to have been her own son and paramour; and was, at the same time, the mistress of more than one noble besides Leicester. According to her own countryman, Cobbett, she spilled more blood during her occupancy of the throne, than any other single agency in the world for a commensurate period; while her treatment of Ireland, under the “humane guidance” and advice of such cruel wretches as Spenser, was neither more nor less than absolutely satanic. For fifteen long years she never ceased to subject that unhappy land to famine, fire and sword. Every device that her hellish nature or that of her agents could concoct for the total extirpation of the people, was put into the most relentless requisition by her. Under the guise of the most sincere friendship, her deputies, times without number, betrayed many of the leaders of the Irish into accepting their hospitality, and then foully set upon them and murdered them while they sat unsuspecting guests at their festive board. And yet, notwithstanding her penal laws, her blood-thirsty soldiery, and all her revolting persecutions, the Irish were more than a match for her in the open field, and ultimately embittered the closing years of her life. From the first moment of the invasion, the O’Neills—Kings and Princes of Aileach, Kings of Ulster and Princes of Tir-Eogain—as well as other chiefs and leaders, fought the Pale incessantly: and now, after a lapse of nearly four hundred years, again evinced to the world, that Ireland was still unconquered, and regarded England as a tyrant and usurper. And yet the opposition of those chiefs and rulers to the hirelings and paid assassins of this infamous woman and her corrupt associates, was of a character the most chivalrous. Unaccustomed to cowardly deeds of blood, these proud warriors preferred to meet the enemy face to face, and decide the issues of the hour in fair, open fight. They could not entertain the Saxon idea of disposing of an adversary by the stealthy knife of the professional murderer; and hence it was that their pride and chivalry had ever been taken advantage of: the invaders being convinced that no reprisals of a character sufficiently dastardly or atrocious to meet their own depredations, would be indulged in by their chivalrous opponents. In evidence of the spirit that actuated both parting individually in this connection, we may refer to the massacre of Mullaghmast, on the one hand, where the English, under professions of the purest friendship, lured many of the Irish chiefs and nobles to a conference or council, and then suddenly pouncing on them, murdered every single soul of them in cold blood; while, on the other hand, we may contrast with this cowardly act—which is but one of a series of the same sort—the noble and generous conduct of Tir-Oen, at the battle of the Yellow Ford, in 1598, where, after defeating the Queen’s troops with terrible slaughter, taking all their artillery and baggage, as well as twelve thousand pieces of gold, the remainder of the shattered army was totally at his mercy, when he might have put every soul that composed it to death. Unlike the cowardly invader, the field once won, he sheathed his sword, and ordered the remnant of the enemy to be spared, as they were unable to fight longer, and commanded that they should be conducted in safety to the Pale. In these two instances we have a thorough insight into the character of the invader and the invaded: so that not another word need be said upon this part of the subject.

And in this manner have the O’Neills and the Irish fought the English up to the present hour. Circumstances have, we know, from time to time, caused a lull in the tempest of arms, but the moment opportunity served the smouldering fires burst forth anew. Not a single day of pure and happy sunshine has ever obtained between England and Ireland, since the flag of the former first flew over the latter. Throughout every single hour of seven hundred long years, Ireland has been secretly plotting or openly fighting against England. Not one solitary reign, from Henry II down to Victoria I, but has been marked with Irish dissatisfaction of English rule. Either in the aggregate or in detail, the Irish people have, throughout that long period, been constantly asserting their right to independence, and their unalterable antipathy to the presence of a foreign power upon their shores. And the same spirit that fought the Henrys, Elizabeth, William and the Georges, is alive still, and lighting their descendants to-day; 1688, 1798, 1848, and 1868 are all episodes of the same history; and the volume now must soon be closed. Humanity and civilisation, common justice and the laws of nations, demand that a people who have battled against tyranny and usurpation for seven successive centuries, and who have still preserved intact their identity, their traditions and their altars, shall be no longer subjected to the brute force and infamous exactions of a freebooter who has so long played false to every principle of honor, and who has been the highwayman of powers and principalities for countless generations.

The record of England in relation to Ireland, is one of the most atrocious known to the history of mankind. It is fraught with the blackest ingratitude, the vilest injustice, and the direst oppression. Notwithstanding that Ireland first gave her an alphabet, and taught her how to spell her name—notwithstanding that Irish missionaries had nurtured her early educational institutions and reclaimed her from Paganism, she misrepresented their religion and their learning in high places, stole in upon them while they slept, and turning upon them like the frozen snake in the fable, robbed them of their independence, and loaded them with chains. Every year of her accursed dominion upon their shores has been marked with some new and overwhelming oppression. She has spit upon their creed, broken their altars, hunted them down with blood-hounds, robbed them of their estates, exiled them penniless to foreign shores, banned their language, murdered their offspring, destroyed their trade and commerce, ruined their manufactures, plundered their exchequer, robbed them of their flag, deprived them of their civil rights, and left them, houseless wanderers, a prey to hunger, cold and rags, upon their own soil. Of all this she stands convicted before the world; and for all this she must alone, so sure as there is a God above her. Ireland still lives, and so do her wrongs. The O’Neills and thousands of brave scions of the past, are still with her, while the rank and file of her sons are as bitterly opposed to English usurpation to-day as they were seven hundred years ago. Besides, at the present hour, the approaches to their final triumph are made luminous with the generous countenance of free America, and the glorious conviction that heaven bends benignly over them; and thus it is that they now stand shoulder to shoulder in eager anticipation of the coming hour, when their banners shall yet once more be flung to the winds, as, with a cry that rends the very earth, they dash down upon their deadly and relentless foe, and smite her hip and thigh as of yore; dealing her the last fatal blow that forever seals her infamous doom.

In the order of Providence, a great corrective, or reactionary principle, attends the misdoings of nations, that, sooner or later, exerts itself in restoring the equilibrium of justice, and avenging the infringement of any of those laws, human or divine, constituted for the welfare and guidance of our race. Whether on the part of governments or individuals, no act of palpable cruelty or barbarity, has ever escaped the censure and reprobation of all good and true peoples since the world became civilized; so that in this connection, the oppressed or injured party has always had the countenance and sympathy of humanity, at least. True, that an effective expression of this sympathy may have often been chilled or embarrassed in individual cases by political considerations or unworthy interests; but then the tendency to illustrate it was there, and in this sense alone, it has often exerted a benign influence. Hungary, Greece, Poland, &c., have all, in turn, had the sympathy of mankind; and so have had the oppressed colonies and people of Great Britain. The cruel treatment, treachery and fraud practiced in the name of justice and religion upon the Sepoys of India, by England, have awakened the deepest commiseration in the bosom of all good and true governments, and aroused, at the same time, the strongest indignation even on the part of nations not over-scrupulous of chains themselves. In like manner, the condition of Ireland has, from time to time, commanded the attention of the world; and, through the cruel expatriation of her children, made itself felt more widely perhaps than that of any other nation. When England perjured herself for the hundredth time, and violated the Treaty of Limerick, she exiled to France a host of our countrymen, who afterwards met her at Fontenoy, as the Irish Brigade, and trailed her bloody and broken in the dust. The wrongs of the past were with them. The cruelties of the Henrys, the murders of Elizabeth, the confiscations of Cromwell, and the perfidy of William, so nerved their arm at the period, that their charge upon the English is mentioned as one of the most memorable and destructive on record. But if they had more than sufficient grounds for dealing a death blow to the power of the tyrant then, how must this debt of vengeance have accumulated since; when, to the wrongs already enumerated are to be added the atrocities of the Georges, as well as those of their worthy descendant—that traitress to humanity, whose hands have been just imbrued in the innocent blood of Allen, O’Brien and Larkin, and who now holds in thrall, within the gloom of her noisome dungeons, some of the noblest spirits that have ever breathed the vital air in this or any age of the world? How, we say, must this debt of vengeance have been heaped up since; and may we not, under its terrible pressure, the next time that we have a fair opportunity of meeting the enemy face to face, anticipate a repetition of that glorious charge in every individual descent we make upon her ranks, until we shall have ground her into pulp, and avenged the blood of our martyrs, which has for ages been crying aloud from the ground, “how long, Oh! Lord?”

We have said that the misdoings of nations are, in the order of Providence, attended with a corrective or reactionary principle, which, sooner or later, exerts itself in restoring the equilibrium of justice; and in no case has this been made more apparent than in that of Ireland. When under the frightful pressure of famine, murder and robbery, her children fled her shores, and sought refuge in the open arms of free America, the tyrant who had caused their exile, never fancied, for a moment, that she was laying the foundation stone of her own ultimate destruction, and gradually forming an Irish Brigade on this continent, which should, one day, with a terrible rebound, repay all the cruelties and wrongs to which she had subjected them from generation to generation. She little fancied, that in each individual Irishman that she had driven from his native shores to seek an asylum beyond the seas, she had sent forth an agent of her own destruction, that would colonize, in common with his exiled brethren, the whole world with a sense of her infamy, and build up, on this free continent, an opposition so tremendous to her interests in every connection, that it should command the attention of every civilized people under the sun, and shake her institutions and existence to their very centre. As is invariable in such cases, she administered the antidote with the poison; and transformed the victims of her wrongs and cruelties into enemies and soldiers; and now that, in the aggregate, they assume the proportions of a powerful and antagonistic nation outside her borders, they only await the hour when they shall descend upon her to the hoarse music of their ancient war cry, and, on the banks of the Shannon, and by the Blackwater, smite her hip and thigh, as of old; but this time without generously escorting her broken and disabled ranks to the borders of the Pale, or permitting them, in the hour of defeat, to recruit their exhausted forces, so that the fight may become more equal.

From the landing of Strongbow, in 1171, at Port Largi, then on subsequently called also the Harbor of the Sun, near Waterford, down to the sacking and burning of Magdala, the capital of King Theodoras, in the present year of grace 1808, the history of English rule and conquests has been one of bloodshed, perjury and crime. Look where you may, and you encounter continuous atrocities similar to the massacres of Elizabeth and Cromwell, or the blowing of the Sepoys of India from the mouth of the cannon of the invader. Well may the ensign of England wear an encrimsoned hue; for, from time immemorial, it has been stooped in the blood of the nations: and that too, without her people having ever fought a proud or decisive battle single-handed. Her fame, in this connection, rests solely upon the influence of her gold and the power of foreign bayonets. Scotland and Ireland have been the main stay of her armies; her native element, per se, affecting their composition in but a secondary degree. The muster rolls of the Peninsula, and the supplementary field of Waterloo, have attested this assertion to the fullest. The fact is, her laurels, for the most part, have been gathered by Irish hands. Taking advantage of the proud daring and chivalry of our people, in connection with the poverty and oppression which she had wrought among them, she shook her gold in their half-starved faces, as she does to-day, and lured them into her service whenever she had a point to attain in the field. Through this channel, and through it alone, the fame of her arms became established; the true aspirations of her own sons seldom exceeding the exalted limits of a bread riot, or the sudden exploits incident to some poaching expedition. As a general thing, the English are traders and diplomats, rather than soldiers. Their character for bravery has been won through the lavish use of their subsidizing gold, rather than through any innate warlike propensities on their part. They have never fought for a myth, or an abstract, chivalrous idea; but always for some bread and beef object, however apparently unconnected with the project said to be had in view. In the exemplification of their Christian missionary spirit, too, this feature of their character is abundantly set forth. Wherever they have succeeded in introducing the Gospel among the heathen, they have subsequently inserted the wedge of civil discord, to be followed on their part by the sword of conquest. No more forcible illustration of this can be found than that presented by India, and other of their dependencies that we could name. In Ireland, also, the same spirit has been evinced; but under different circumstances. She was already civilized and Christianized when the invader first landed upon her shores; but in no way was he enabled to totally overthrow her independence, except through the instrumentality of the brand of religious discord, which, for upwards of two hundred years, he had kept flaming at the foundations of her nationality. It was the hostility bitterly fomented between the Protestants and the Catholics of Ireland, from 1782 to the year 1800, that led to the so-called Union, and from this latter period left her, to the present hour, at the mercy of one of the most relentless and unprincipled despotisms that has ever disfigured the annals of the human race.

Edmund Burk was right when he declared in his place in Parliament, if we remember correctly, that the Penal Laws enacted by England against Ireland, were characterized by an ingenuity the most fiendish on record, and an attempt to oppress, degrade and demoralize a people, without a parallel in the history of even the most barbarious ages. Within the recollection of persons now living, nine-tenths of the population were held in a condition of the most abject slavery, and treated as aliens and enemies at their own doors. Add to this the fact, that, previous to the granting of Emancipation, scarce a generation had passed away since their priests were murdered at the altar, or hunted down with dogs, like wild beasts; their goods and chattels seized upon by any emissary of the government, and at a nominal valuation appropriated to his own use; their creed and language denounced and outlawed; their children deprived of the light of learning under a penalty the most fearful; and, wherever the tyrant had the power, their lands confiscated and handed over to their oppressors. The wonder has long been, that, under such a terrible regime, Ireland had not sunk into the most hopeless barbarism, or that England had not absorbed her, until, as Lord Byron once observed on the subject, they had become one and indivisible, as “the shark with his prey.” No more desperate attempt has ever been made to blot out a nation, and none has ever failed more signally; for, notwithstanding this dreadful cannonade of ages, backed up with the final and murderous assault of the Reformation and the Georges, Ireland, to-day, is more powerful and united than she has ever been since the sceptre of the Dane was broken upon her historic shores. This fact is sustained by evidences teeming upon us from every point of the compass. A great and mysterious embodiment of her influence, and a vague and oppressive sense of her unseen presence, hang ominously over all the councils of her task-masters, and build up strange dynasties in the disturbed slumbers of even royalty itself. Nor bolt nor bar can shut out the low mutterings of her approaching thunder, or exclude her ubiquitous hand from tracing, in letters of blood, the impending doom of her infamous oppressor upon the wall. Heaven has decreed it; and thus it is, that, in more than one quarter of the globe the exiled children of her matchless hills and vales have multiplied into a positive power, that, inflamed with the memories of her undeserved sufferings, shall, one day, be precipitated upon her enemies with the most destructive and overwhelming effect, and humble them forever in the dust.

To avert this blow has now become a desideratum so great with England, that all her cunning and genius are brought to bear upon the subject. So long as Ireland was dependent solely upon her own resources, and the spirit of revolution confined strictly within her borders, England felt herself competent to avert the evil day, for an indefinite period, through the instrumentality of the rope and the bayonet; but now that beyond the seas, the terrible war cloud of Fenianism fills the whole west, surcharged with vengeance and the great, broad lightnings of American freedom, she reels to her very centre, and begins to loosen her hold, claw by claw, upon her victim, in the hope that her lacerated and bleeding prey may be satisfied with a partial release from its sufferings, and still permit her to hold it in her modified clutch. Here she shall fail, however; for the people of Ireland know her too well to permit her to breathe the same atmosphere with them, or preserve the slightest footing on their soil. They know her to have been a traitor, a perjurer, a robber and an assassin, throughout the whole of her infamous career. Besides remembering her at Mullaghmaston and Limerick, they had a taste of her quality in 1782, when, under the pressure of the Protestant bayonets of the famous “Volunteers,” she, by a solemn act of her King, Lords and Commons, in Parliament assembled, swept Poyning’s despotic Law from her Statute Books, and relinquished FOREVER all right and title to interfere in the local affairs of Ireland, only to perjure herself subsequently, by creating rotten boroughs and dispensing titles and millions of gold, for the purpose of controlling those very same affairs, not only more effectually than ever, but with the further view of diverting all the resources of the country out of their legitimate channels into her own hands, so that she should be at once the tyrant, and the purse and conscience keeper of our race. They remember all this, we say, and now they are about to call upon her for an account of her stewardship, and make her foot the bill, and that, too, to the very last farthing.

Of course, we are aware that much of the elevated mind and strength which invigorate the Irish element on this continent, in this connection, is to be attributed, unquestionably, to the sublime lessons of the great American people, and the generous sympathy they evince invariably in regard to nations deprived of the blessings of freedom. Time was, we are aware, when the children of Ireland had no such exalted idea of human liberty as they possess to-day, and when they would have hailed the return of kingcraft to their shores, on the restitution of their independence, with every demonstration of pleasure; but that period has passed away, and forever. Having once tasted the blessings, and imbibed the idea of American institutions, they have now cast aside every sentiment of barbarism in this relation, and stepped out on the broad platform of justice and common sense; ignoring the mere accident of birth, and paying homage only to those attributes and characteristics which, in themselves, tend to the elevation of the human family, and which are not confined to any peculiar class or people.

When it becomes understood, that ever since the introduction of printing, and the consequent diffusion of book and newspaper literature throughout Europe, the history and people of Ireland have been subjected by the invader to every description of the grossest misrepresentation, it will create no small degree of surprise, that the country has survived the assault, or that she presents to-day a compact individuality, that commands the sympathy and respect of most of the nations of the earth. Heaven, itself, must have inspired the vigor, truth and heroism which, through a lapse of seven hundred years, have battled for the right against the most fearful odds, and that now arms her, on both sides of the Atlantic, with the mighty resolve which cannot fail to result in her final redemption from the chains of the oppressor. Her vitality in this connection has scarcely a parallel in the history of the past; from the fact, that she has been subjected to a twofold persecution—that of semi-barbarism, and that of civilization also. The atrocities of the hybrid freebooters that invaded her shores in the twelfth century, were not more revolting than those which characterized her rulers six hundred years subsequently, when they were engaged in founding educational institutions, and printing whole cargoes of ten-penny Bibles, for the purpose of pandering to the whims of the age, and doing honor to the spirit of the royal Pacha who moulded his creed to his lusts, and left his rottenness a loathsome legacy to his successors. Yes, the wonder is, that she has survived all this, and, instead of falling into the vortex prepared for her, now stands with her uplifted arm, awaiting the propitious moment, when she can deal a final and irresistible blow to the ingrate that, in days of yore, she had warmed into intellectual life on her own hearthstone.

If there had been anything in the climate, soil, people or geographical position of Ireland, to operate against her prosperity as a nation, or calculated to retard her progress in any connection whatever, there might be some misgivings in relation to the causes of her poverty and degradation; but as the most reliable political economists, and even those unfriendly to the Irish name and race, admit that no such drawbacks exist, we look, of course, to the system of government to which the country has been so long subjected, as the source of all the evils that have so cruelly and pertinaciously beset it. McCollough, Wakefield, Foster, and other English writers, bear the highest testimony to the richness of its soil, the salubrity of its air, and its other great natural advantages. Its harbors, bays, lakes and rivers are among the finest in the world, while its neglected mineral wealth is presumed to be all but inexhaustible. In addition to this, it is stated by Dr. Forbes—one of the Court physicians, who had made a tour of the kingdom—that the inhabitants are of a character the most industrious, and bear up under the oppressive system which weighs upon them in a manner the most heroic. It is to opinions from such sources as these we point, with every degree of confidence, as they cannot be charged with being prejudiced in our favor; and were we inclined to be more diffuse upon the subject, we might quote author after author, and all of English proclivities too, who bear evidence to the suggestive character of the elements of material wealth which we possess in every relation, and which, through the disastrous policy pursued towards us from generation to generation, have been paralyzed and prostituted to an extent that almost defies comprehension.

Why did England violate a solemn pledge, given in 1782, to the effect, that she relinquished all claim to interfere in the management of the local affairs of Ireland, and conceded to the people of that country the undoubted and inalienable right of conducting their own internal affairs upon any basis they thought proper? After having experienced the beneficial results of this policy upon the sister kingdom for a space of eighteen years, why did she revoke the act establishing it, and force the hated Union upon a people, a majority of whom were not free to express an opinion upon the subject, or to resist a measure thrust upon them through perjury, intimidation, bribery and fraud? The reason has long been quite obvious to the world—the manufacturing interests and the trade and commerce of Ireland have ever been and must ever remain antagonistic to those of England. This fact has always influenced the legislation of the latter country, and brought it to bear heavily and unjustly upon almost every Irish project that has been undertaken for the last three hundred years. When any particular Irish manufacture was found to interfere with the interests of a similar one in England, instantly devices were set on foot by the enemy to crush it, or so embarrass it that its destruction could not fail to follow. It was banned and taxed out of the market until it died. In this way, the silk, glass and woolen manufactures of the country were destroyed; the latter having so injured the English manufacturers in the time of William the Third, that they presented a memorial to this dignified and affectionate son-in-law of James, praying that the manufacture in Ireland might be suppressed, as it was interfering with the success of the woolen trade in England; which prayer the king entertained favorably, and promised to grant. In this way, from the earliest days of the invasion, the interests of Ireland have been trodden under the feet of the oppressor; while, in a religious point of view, her people have been held for generations in the most frightful bondage, and constrained to contribute to the maintenance of a Church which nineteen-twentieths of them believed to be heretical, and which had been thrust upon them in violation of every right, human and divine.

Now, however, it is brightening up on the verge of the horizon, and, like chickens, England’s untold acts of infamy and oppression, in regard to Ireland, are coming home to roost. In every city and hamlet, throughout the great Republic of the United States, and in every town and village in Ireland, as well as throughout the rural districts, there exists a regiment or detachment of the vast army of the Irish Republic. No matter how invisible the force may be at any particular point, yet there it exists, awaiting the signal to pounce upon the enemy, and avenge the wrongs of ages; each member of it feeling, within his heart of hearts, that those injuries have reached him individually, and that, without the opportunity of wiping them out, even at the expense of the last drop of his heart’s blood, the conquest, when achieved, would be almost worthless in his eyes. It is with this element that England, at the present juncture, has to deal at home and abroad; and now that the avalanche, after rolling down the steep of seven successive centuries, has accumulated in magnitude and force most tremendously, and sufficiently to overcome every obstacle that happens to lie in its path, ere long we shall find it leaping in thunder upon the plain, and overwhelming those who so long mocked at its approach, and who now so vainly attempt to stay its resistless course.

RIDGEWAY

AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE OF THE FENIAN INVASION OF CANADA.

CHAPTER I.

On a gloomy evening in the early part of May, 1866, and while astute politicians were struck with the formidable aspect of Fenianism in both hemispheres, a solitary soldier, in the muddy, red jacket of a private in the English army, might be seen hastily wending his way across a bridge which led from one of the most important strongholds in Canada, to a town of considerable pretensions, that lay directly opposite, and to which he was now bending his steps. Although the weather, from the season of the year, might be presumed to be somewhat genial, yet it was raw and gusty; and as the pedestrian was without an overcoat, the uncomfortable and antagonistic shrug of his shoulders, as the chill, fitful blast swept past him, was quite discernible to any eye that happened to catch his figure at the period. Soon, however, he left the bridge and river behind him, and, stepping on terra firma, turned hastily down one of the unpretending streets of the town, and entered a restaurant, out of the drinking saloon of which, several narrow passages led to small convivial apartments, or rather compartments, in which the landlord, or “mine host” professed to work culinary miracles, of every possible shade, in the interest of his patrons. The establishment, although not the most fashionable in the place, was still regarded as respectable, and was, consequently, the frequent resort of many well-to-do tradesmen, and others, who, after the cares of the day had been laid by, generally repaired thither to slake their thirst with a flowing tankard, or indulge in “a stew,” a quiet game of billiards or a cigar, as the case might be. From the description of the various pictures which adorned or decorated the bar-room, the nationality of the proprietor was easily discerned. Just over a goodly and shining away of handsome mirrors that, inside the counter, reflected a maze of graceful bottles, cut glass and various ornaments appropriate to the profession, hung a large map of Ireland, very beautifully gotten up: while on either side of it, a neat, gilt frame, enclosing a most excellent likeness of Daniel O’Connell and Robert Emmet, respectively, harmonized in every relation with the map itself. Around the walls of the room, and throughout the whole establishment, kindred prints and paintings were somewhat profusely scattered; presenting unmistakable evidences, that the proprietor hailed from the Emerald Isle, and had no inclination, whatever, to disguise the fact from either his customers or the world.

At the period that the soldier entered the premises, there were some half dozen persons seated in the bar; each discussing his favorite beverage or enjoying his peculiar “weed.” Among these there was one individual, however, whose appearance was singularly striking, and who was taking part in the general conversation with an easy flippancy and keenness of observation that showed he was a person of no ordinary information or experience. There was something about him, nevertheless, that, notwithstanding all his efforts to be attractive, was strangely repellent. His small, grey eyes, thin, blue lips and hooked nose, gave an expression to his countenance which was far from prepossessing; while his soft, low, purring chuckle of a laugh, whenever he made a point in his favor through some facile observation that interfered with the deductions of those around him, evoked the idea, that he was some huge, human mouser that was congratulating himself on having disposed of some unfortunate and unsuspecting canary. He was, withal, shapely, and had an air of refinement about him, the most decided, and, quite beyond the ordinary run of saloon habitues. His complexion though somewhat dark and out of keeping with the color of his eyes, was yet pure; while his teeth were remarkably white and brilliant, and apparently as sharp as lancets. In height he was about five feet ten inches; and in age, somewhere in the vicinity of thirty. He was dressed in plain gray clothes; and, from all one might gather from his external appearance, was a person in comfortable circumstances. He was unknown not only to “mine host,” but to every one present; having, as he informed them in the ordinary flow of conversation, but just arrived in town, where he had business to transact which might detain him for a few days, or possibly longer. This information had been volunteered before the arrival of the soldier; so that when the latter had taken his seat, he was literally a greater stranger as to the name or intentions of the hook-nosed gentleman than any one present—the former having been communicated to the landlord as Philip Greaves, and the latter, as already intimated, quite freely disclosed during the natural flow of the conversation in which he had taken and still took part.

Perhaps there were no two beings on earth so dissimilar in every relation, as were he and the red coat who now ensconsed himself in one of the chairs, and accepted the invitation to take a friendly glass with the stranger. He, humble as the rank he bore in the service, was a young man of most prepossessing appearance and excellent address. His figure, although slight, was beautifully symmetrical and finely knit. In stature he was about five feet eleven inches, and was apparently as agile as a leopard. The whole volume of his heart was laid open in his broad, manly brow and clear dark eyes; and his laughter rang out now and then, at the brilliant wit or searching sarcasm of his neighbor, in such pure and joyous tones, as to be infectious even amongst those who were paying but little attention to what had provoked it. He could not have numbered more than twenty-five or twenty-six summers; and it was almost painful, in the presence of such manly beauty and so light a heart, to dwell on the fact, that the possessor of both, was in absolute slavery, how carelessly soever he wore his shackles. While both these individuals differed the one from the other to the extent already mentioned, the proprietor of the saloon, in turn, presented an appearance as dissimilar to that of either of his customers as did that of the one to the other. He was a man of herculean proportions, and blessed with as commonplace features as you could find in a day’s walk. Every fibre of his frame bespoke the most gigantic strength, while his full, round face glowed with the most refreshing health, and presented at the same time as stolid an expression as could well be imagined in connection with his vocation. Still, there was something in his keen, gray eye and about his mouth, that bid you beware of taking the book by the cover; while an odd word of the conversation that now and then reached his ear, called up a strange expression of intelligence which swept across his features with the speed of light, and then left them as quiescent and apparently unintellectual as before. This individual whom we shall name Thomas O’Brien, or Big Tom, as his friends were wont to call him, although never regarded as being over brilliant, there were those who averred that he not only possessed a fund of good, common sense, but who stated further, that he was a man of great influence not only among the soldiers in the fort, but among many of his countrymen both in town and out of it. Tom spoke very slowly and always in an oracular manner; nor were his movements behind his bar of a very demonstrative character; as no press of custom, whatever, seemed to possess the power of accelerating his motions or inducing him to exceed the steady formula that he appeared to have adopted in relation to serving his customers; still he possessed the jewel of honesty and urbanity as an offset to all this; and, like most large men, was, on the whole, of a kind and excellent temper. When seen standing by the river or in any elevated position, he conveyed the idea of a sort of human lighthouse, or a chimney on fire, so fiercely red was the tremendous shock of hair that covered his towering head. He was still a young man, and, like the soldier, unmarried; although the heart of the latter had gone forth and was in the safe keeping of a charming young cousin of “mine host,” who had emigrated to America some time previously, and who now resided with her friends in the city of Buffalo. Tom had preceded his relatives by some years, and had sojourned, up to the period of their landing, in the United States also; but taking a sudden notion, as it would seem, he pulled up his stakes, and, like other adventurers, settled down, apparently haphazard, in the town in which he now lived; and where he had already been upwards of two years; having bought out the “Sign of the Harp,” as we shall call it, with all its appointments, from another Son of the Sod, who had made up his mind to go West.

Before the soldier, whom we shall name Nicholas, or Nick Barry, had finished his glass, Greaves entered into conversation with him in relation to the strength of the fort, and the nationality of the regiment that garrisoned it; observing, at the same time, that, of course, as usual, a fair sprinkling from the Emerald Isle was to be found among them.

“Yes,” said Barry, “go where you may throughout the empire, and whenever you meet a red coat you will be right in four cases out of six in putting it down as belonging to an Irishman; that is, provided its precise color and texture are like mine; but you would not be so safe in applying the same rule wherever you chanced to encounter the clear, bright flash of the genuine scarlet.”

“And why?” returned Greaves, with an inquiring air which seemed to be quite at sea upon the subject; although up to that moment, his conversation was such as to lead one to infer that he could scarcely be in the dark upon a subject so generally understood.

“Because,” said Nick, “the Irish are only fit to do the fighting; and that’s always done, you know, by the rank and file.”

This reply, although not over satisfactory to the interrogator, seemed to afford infinite amusement to Big Tom, who, with a perfect sledge hammer of a laugh, exclaimed when Barry had finished:

“Well done Nick, and the divil a betther could it be said if I said it myself.”

This unusual and lively demonstration on the part of O’Brien, seemed to attract the notice of Greaves, who, with the utmost good humor, observed, while glancing in the direction of the bar:

“From Ireland, too, I’ll bet my head!”

“Seven miles out of it,” returned Tom with a slight twinkle of his eye, “and, of coorse, a gintleman so larned as you will be able to tell where that is.”

“Well, for the life of me,” observed Greaves, “I cannot divine what you are at, with your ‘seven miles out,’ but as I’m an Englishman, I suppose that accounts for it.”

“He means by what he has said,” interrupted Barry, “that he is from Connaught, which, for some reason or other, is regarded as seven miles out of Ireland.”

“For some raison or other did you say,” returned Tom. “Faith and its raison enough there is for that same; for it was to Connaught that Cromwell and the rest of the blaggards banished or confined the Irish hayros that gave the Sassenach such throuble in oulden times, and that’s the raison, you know, that the sayin, ‘to h—l or Connaught,’ first got a futtin in the world, and that Connaught is regarded as bein seven miles out, by the people who know the ins and outs of it.”

This was delivered in a quiet, oracular manner from which there was no appeal; so the conversation continued to flow in a kindred channel—Barry observing that the regiments then stationed in Canada were largely adulterated, as he humorously termed it, with the Irish element, which, during such times of commotion, was considered by England safer abroad than at home.

“How is that?” said Greaves, casting a searching glance towards the speaker. “I should fancy that the British soldier was safe, and true to the crown whether at home or abroad; although I am free to confess, that the Irish, as a nation, have much to complain of.”

“And how can you separate the man from the nation; and if a people are oppressed and wronged as a whole, are they not oppressed and wronged individually?” replied O’Brien.

“The inference is reasonable,” returned the other; “but as England seems sensible that something ought to be done for the amelioration of the condition of Ireland no doubt the two nations will soon settle down in the bonds of amity and love, and, in a better state of things, forget all their bickerings and heartburnings.”

“There was a payriod,” retorted Tom, “when England could have done somethin to appase Ireland, but that payriod is past and gone forever! Durin the airly days of O’Connell, the repale of the Union and the abolition of the Church Establishment would have worked merricles. These measures would have done away with absenteeism, an unjust and gallin taxation, and would have given Ireland the conthrol, in some degree at laste, of her own local affairs. If the Act of 1782 previntin England from intherfarin in any degree in those affairs was revived, it would have given the Irish a chance to build up their manufactures and recruit their ruined thrade and commerce. It would have recalled the landlord to his estates, from forrin parts, and re-inthroduced a native parliament that understood the wants and wishes of the people, and that was intherested in carryin them out, and givin the masses an opportunity of developin their resources and turnin their soil to account, that is acre for acre more fertile than that of England, to-day. It would have gathered home from the four winds of the earth the scatthered wealth that has followed the absentee to distant lands and made Dublin and Cork and every city in the counthry alive with min and wimmin, that were able to pathronise Irish manufactures, aye, and pay for them too. All this it would have done and a thousand times more; but as I have already said, the chance has been thrown away by England, never to be recovered by her durin secula seculorum; for now the light of American freedom has fallen upon Ireland, and, pointed out what ought to be her thrue standin, and the insufficiency of what she once would have been satisfied with. In the broad effulgence of its glory, the people of Ireland now persave that so if long as they attached any importance to the mere accident of birth, or bent the knee to hereditary monarchy, they were but walking in the valley and shadow of death. The great moral spectacle of American freedom built upon the broad and imperishable basis of the voluntary and intelligent consint of a whole people, has so upset their household gods and desthroyed the prestige of kingcraft in their eyes, that they now look forward to the total overthrow of monarchical institutions in their midst, and the establishment, on their shores, of a Republic in every particular the counterpart of that which now commands the admiration of the world, across the lines there, and which is gradually sappin the foundation of British rule on this side of the lakes, as well as litherally swallowin us up unknownst to ourselves. This is how the case stands now; so that we can aisily persave, that England has lost the power and opportunity of conciliatin the Irish race; bekase they have no longer a feelin or sintiment in common with her.”

These observations, which were made with a degree of ease and eloquence regarded as totally foreign to Tom, actually electrified his hearers, and drew a compliment from Greaves; while Barry, who knew a good deal of him, was so astonished at his sudden and earnest volubility, he could not resist the temptation of assuring him that he was an honor to his country, if not to humanity at large. The other three or four individuals present joined in the sentiment, so that, for the time being, O’Brien was no ordinary personage in their minds, while a quiet wink from one to the other seemed to place it beyond a shadow of doubt, that, in their estimation, Big Tom knew more than he ever got credit for.

When the conversation again began to flow freely, the gentleman, with the hooked nose, turned it imperceptibly upon Fenianism, and the rumored intention of the Organization, in the United States, to make a descent upon Canada at no distant day. At this point, O’Brien put in a word or two, to the effect, that he was not so sure of the propriety of the Brotherhood invading the Province, as its inhabitants were not in any way answerable for the wrongs which had been inflicted by England upon Ireland. Here Barry observed, that although he was not competent to speak on the matter, and had no desire to endorse or countenance such an invasion, he regarded a Fenian attack upon Canada fully as justifiable as an assault of the same character upon England, or any other portion of her majesty’s dominions. The empire, he contended, was a unit and no part of it could be assailed, that did not possess, in relation to Ireland, just as inoffensive people as the Canadians were. Fenianism, he presumed, did not pretend to make war upon individuals, but upon a government, in any or all of its ramifications, that was alleged to be oppressive and an enemy to civil and religious freedom; and so long as any people chose to endorse the acts of such a government by defending them, and adhering to the flag under which they were said to have been committed, so long were they amenable to the party who assumed to be aggrieved in the premises, as aiders and abettors of the offence.

This position was so reasonable and so logical that there was but little room for dispute upon the subject. And hence the absurdity of certain squeamish gentlemen who, before and since the invasion of 1866, have denounced a descent upon Canada as not so justifiable as an attack upon the more central parts of the empire, from the assumed fact, that the Canadians are in no way chargeable with the wrongs inflicted by the British Government upon Ireland. Such an argument to a military man, or astute politician, would be the very height of absurdity. The outworks are always stormed and taken before the citadel falls; nor are those who occupy or defend them regarded with any personal ill feeling by the assailing party, and are only enemies in so far as they choose to espouse the cause and defend, at the point of the sword, the acts and existence of a government held to be corrupt and oppressive. From the difference in population and other circumstances, there are a greater number of inoffensive persons in England, in relation to Irish grievances, than there are in Canada; so that, adopting the very style of argument used by those gingerly or subsidized cavillers, there are more causes for justifying a descent, at any time, upon the latter than upon the former country. The truth is, the masses or people of any country are, for the most part, inoffensive on the whole, and are merely wielded by governments with a view to maintaining a power for good or evil, having in many cases themselves no very clear idea of the grounds upon which the field may have been taken; and laying down their arms at a moment’s notice, without being concerned as to the expediency or justice of a cessation of hostilities. In truth, even amid armies thundering down upon each other at the word of command, there are necessarily thousands of unoffending persons who entertain not a single feeling of animosity against their opponents individually, and who are but simply the exponents of an idea that their rulers deem necessary to maintain at the point of the bayonet; although they themselves may not sympathize with it to any extent whatever. So that it is apparent, that the invasion of Canada was never undertaken with a view to despoiling or injuring the people per se of that country; but for the simple purpose of making a descent upon a point of the British empire most accessible to the arms of the Republic of Ireland on this continent, in the hope of establishing a basis that would enable Irish Nationalists to operate successfully against a government that had for seven hundred years subjected their country, name and race, to every injustice and persecution known to the history of crime. Such are the contingencies of war, that the innocent are dragged into the vortex by the guilty, and that those who choose to adopt a flag and are found armed in its defence, are constructively the enemies of the invaders, and according to the usages of all nations amenable in the field for the conduct of their rulers. Whatever may be said to the contrary, then, by English sympathizers or weak-kneed patriots, so long as Canada is a portion of the British empire, so long is she a legitimate point of attack for the enemies of that empire, and no description of special pleading can make it otherwise. And here we would advise the people of the New Dominion to look into this matter and weigh the consequences of being influenced by any seeming or real hostile attitude to the government of the United States, or the mighty hosts which are now gathering in battle array in the cause of Irish freedom. England is fallen! Her power and prestige are gone forever! The star of Irish liberty has already emerged from the clouds that have so long lain piled up along the horizon of the land of the enslaved Celt, and no power on earth can obscure its growing Lustre, until it blazes forth in the full meridian, splendor of Irish nationality and independence! Let our neighbors, therefore, we say, not be betrayed into raising a puny arm against the tremendous force that cannot fail to be exerted ere long in this connection, or their redemption from the British yoke and their consequent absorption by the great American Commonwealth may be reddened with more blood than the circumstances of the case really require.

When Barry had finished his few observations on this topic, Greaves, in further pursuance of the subject, and with the apparent view of gathering the tone of Canadian opinion upon it, observed, that if all the Irish population of the Provinces were as true to the sentiment of the independence of their country, as O’Brien and his military friend, there might be some reason for apprehending that the intended invasion of the Canadas by the Fenian organization of the United States, would tend to more alarming results to England than were anticipated by the friends of that country; remarking, in addition, that the Irish element must be very large in her majesty’s Canadian possessions, if one might judge from the recent St. Patrick’s Day demonstration throughout them, and the various St. Patrick’s Societies to be found scattered from one end of the colony to the other; all of which were, no doubt, more or less tinged with opinions and aspirations similar to those held by the two individuals who had just spoken.

“Oh, yes,” rejoined Big Tom, “there are St. Patrick Societies in abundance, but let me inform you, that instead of bein national associations, as they purport to be, they are the very sthrongholds of England in this country, and, with scarce an exception, the deadliest opponents to the very indepindence that we have benn jist spakin about. For the most part, they are filled chock full of a pack of miserable toadies to the governmint, which manages to gather into them a pack of rottin, ladin Irishmin who can make speeches, dhrink ‘the day and all who honor it,’ sing ‘God save the Queen,’ and talk English blatherskite about the glory of the impire, the army and navy, and everythin else in the world save and except the wrongs of poor, ould Ireland, and the way to redhress them. Why, sir, barrin a word dhropped here and there, you’d think it was in an Orange Lodge you were, if you happened to step in on one of those societies while engaged in celebrating, as they call it, the anniversary of their pathron Saint; for it’s nothin you’d hear but ‘Rule Britannia,’ ‘The Red, White and Blue,’ and kindhered sintiments, and if a chap did happen to give ‘The harp that wanst,’ why, its the sweet, soft air they’d be admirin, and the poethry of Tom Moore, rather than the low wail for vingeance that was smothered in the heart of the song itself. What could you expect from sich a St Patrick’s Society as that of Toronto, with a gintleman at its head with the freedom of an English city in his breeches pocket, and a desire to emulate English statesmen and English institutions in his heart! Look, also, at the able and larned Irishman who stands at the head of the University of that same methropolis of the West, and whose eloquence so mystifies his faithlessness to Ireland as to confuse you, and almost lade you captive, until, on cooler deliberation, you find that his response to ‘the toast of the evenin,’ is naither more nor less than a superb burst of oratory, robed in green and goold, but with a heart as purely English as that which throbbed within the breast of the renegade Wellington or the late wily Lord Palmerston. Oh, no! the St. Patrick Societies of America, and of every other portion of the globe, are simply whited sepulchres, or false beacons erected or fosthered by the English governmint to mislade the unsuspectin portions of our race from the allagiance due to their own counthry, by studiously inculcatin sintimints and ideas favorable to English supremacy, which can be paraded before the world as the thrue expression of the Irish people, in relation to the red that governs them, and their willinness to remain as they are, part and parcel of the impire. Sich min as the two I have jist mintioned do more to perpetuate the thraldom of our country than the most unfrindly and subtle statesman that exists on the other side of the Atlantic to-day; bekase they are powerful inemies, by their example in our own camp, and bekase there are those amongst us who are aisily led, and who consequintly fall a victim to their influence and example.”

“Sure, we all know, that the Scotch thricksther at the head of the govermint here, could do but little if it was not for such people as Ogle R., George. L., Darcy and ‘the docther,’ as he is called in Toronto; and thus it is, that although the three Toronto gintlemen that I now name, are, I honestly believe, deservedly respected and esteemed in every other relation of life, they belong body and sowl to the English sintimint of the counthry; and if the most favorable opportunity was offered them to-morrow, would never raise a helpin hand to place the green above the red. But, as this is dhry work, and as I have not had sich a bout at it since I opened here, come, one and all, and let us wet our whistles, for I see you have jist made spy-glasses of your tumblers.”

CHAPTER II.

Although delivered in a style somewhat uncouth, there was a great deal of truth and native eloquence about these observations of O’Brien. There is no doubt but the St. Patrick Societies of this continent, and perhaps of the world, are characterized, in no ordinary degree, by the spirit and design to which he alluded. In so far as those belonging to the British empire are concerned, he was right, almost without an exception; for it must be admitted, that these societies are, for the most part, filled with pseudo patriots, who discard all revolutionary theories, and are of the opinion, that the independence of their country, if they ever cast a glance in that direction, ought to be achieved in the most lady-like manner, and with “white kids.” Look, for instance, at some of the members of these associations and kindred bodies in New York and in various other parts of the Union, and analyze the spirit which finds expression in their observance of the anniversary of Ireland’s tutelar Saint. From the moment that the cloth is removed, until the last of the company gyrates out of the room to his carriage, we have nothing but a war of eloquence between rival politicians who are candidates for municipal or other lucrative honors, or a subtle bid for Irish support through some adroit manoeuvre, by which an adversary is, for the time being, thrown into the shade. To be sure, Mr. Richard This or Mr. John That, may occasionally give us a taste of his research and learning, in a re-hash from the “Annals of the Four Masters,” or from some of the leading periodicals of the day; and we may, in addition, be treated to an original poem touching Ireland from some of the various up-hill-workers of the Muses, with whom the great mercantile centre abounds; but as to anything practical relative to the amelioration of the wretched condition of the country in whose name they assemble upon such occasions, that is simply out of the question; all parties, as a general thing, satisfying themselves with a hacknied and stereotyped enumeration of her wrongs, and the usual bland denunciations of her oppressors.

And here we give an illustration of St. Patrick Societies under their most patriotic aspect; for the power of speech which characterizes, this great Commonwealth, and our total immunity from English persecution, enable the spirit which actuates these societies, beneath the skull and cross bones of St. George, to be a little more patriotic here, in its language at least, than it dares to be in any portion of the dominions of England. Still, its positive antagonism to Irish independence, under the British flag, is scarcely more reprehensible than its negative influence in the same direction under the Stars and Stripes; so that Ireland, suffering at their hands alike, might with every degree of justice place them in the same category.

After all, it is the masses that free a nation, and thank God for it. A leader may in vain look for a host to follow him, but a host never in vain for a leader, and hence the defection of a few prominent men from the great, Irish national idea which now so moves this continent, and commands the attention of the world, amounts to but little save sorrow at the stigma it casts upon our race. The rank and file of our people are true to the spirit that fired the O’Neill’s and the Geraldines of old; and this being the case, the freedom of Ireland is secured beyond any possible contingency—England is brought to bay at home and abroad. The mighty embodiments of Irish power and patriotism, yclept Fenianism, stalks forth through the empire with an uplifted glaive in its hand, and no one can say how soon or where the swift stroke of destruction shall fall. Its presence fills with gloomy alarm every nook and corner of the land, and paralyzes all the energies of the oppressor. Through its overwhelming influence, the most cherished institutions of the usurper are being overthrown, and the crown and mace all but converted into baubles. It has destroyed the power and prestige of a hereditary aristocracy, and thrown, in a measure, the whole government of the land into the hands of Commoners. The privileged classes, no longer oracular, recede before it, and a great democratic idea occupies the ground upon which they stood—in short, illuminated and impelled by the glorious spirit and impulses which moved the immortal founders of this grand Republic of the West, it has gone forth to avenge and to conquer, and to build up upon the shores of the Old World such a grateful monument to the genius of American freedom, as shall, from its lofty summit, pour its radiance over the darkest valleys of Central Europe, until the frozen grasp of despotism yields to its magic touch and the chains shall fall from the bleeding limbs of millions, who on emerging from the valley and shadow of death into the pure sunlight of liberty, shall sing paeans in honor of the great American people who first taught humanity to the nations of the earth.

When all present had done justice to O’Brien’s proffered “treat,” and when Greaves seemed to be moved to a friendly view of Irish nationality, in a gap in some desultory conversation that happened to occur casually, this latter worthy asked whether he could be accommodated with a room at “The Harp,” while he remained in town, as he was a stranger in a great measure, and having accidentally, as he said, made the acquaintance of one he believed to be an agreeable landlord. Tom replied in the affirmative; for, in connection with the saloon business, he kept a few boarders and had, besides, ample accommodation for more than one occasional guest. Soon then, Greaves, who was to send the following morning to the railroad station for his luggage, picked up a small traveling bag by his side, asked to be shown to his room, as he professed to be somewhat tired, and bidding the company “good night,” while shaking hands with Barry, disappeared with Tom down the long passage which led to his sleeping apartment on the floor above.

When O’Brien returned to the bar, half a dozen more of his usual customers had dropped in to exchange a kindly word with him, and taste his newest “on tap.” Before reaching the counter, however, and just as he was passing Barry, he whispered something in the ear of the latter, which seemed to arrest his attention, and to which he appeared to answer with a significant nod and peculiar expression of countenance. Barry being off duty, and having received permission to remain in town all night, paid no regard to the nine o’clock drums and fifes audible from the garrison; and although quite an abstemious young fellow, he made himself sufficiently social with the new comers, most of whom were acquaintances. The remainder of the evening was passed in the usual bar-room style; although the conversation for the most part, turned upon the wrongs of Ireland and the mode of redressing them. Now that Greaves had retired, there appeared to be less restraint upon the few who had been a witness of the observations he had made upon the subject, for they one and all seemed to flow into the common channel of sympathy, so largely occupied by O’Brien in this connection. In addition, one of them ventured to remark, that although Greaves pretended to be an Englishman, he was evidently no such thing; for on more than one occasion, he gave utterance to expressions that were not only purely Irish, but tinged with a genuine Irish accent and native peculiarity, that no mere accident could account for, and which was, without doubt, the genuine thing itself peeping out at the elbows of a foreign dress. This idea seemed to find favor with O’Brien, although Barry was not impressed with its correctness, from the fact, no doubt, of his constant intercommunication with the English and Irish element that was so jumbled up in his company.

As it became later, the party began to drop off, until about twelve o’clock, up went the shutters and round went the heavy key in the bar-room door—all having disappeared at the latter period, save Barry and one of his most intimate friends who seemed loath to leave, and inclined to take another glass. No sooner then, were the doors and windows securely fastened, and the gas extinguished, than both these parties accompanied by Tom with a bed-room lamp in his hand, proceeded to a small and comfortable apartment which was sacred to the foot of every individual who was not a tried friend of O’Brien. Here all three seated themselves beside a comfortable coal fire that burned brightly in the grate: when Tom, on extinguishing the lamp, after having lit the jet of gas that hung in the centre of the room, exclaimed:—

“Nick, my name’s not Tom O’Brien, or we have got the divil up-stairs!—but what he’s up to it’s hard to say: although I thought it was jist as well to let him take up his quarthers here, seem that I’ll be able to keep an eye on him—now that the times are becomin sarious.”

“Certainly,” replied Barry, “his appearance is far from prepossessing, but you know, Tom, it’s not always safe to judge a man by this criterion.”

“That’s thrue,” returned the other, “but didn’t you hear the fella how he wanted to sift you about the Irish sintiment of the garrison, as well as lade us out upon the feelins of the Irish in gineral throughout the Province?”

“I did, of course,” answered Nick, “but really thought that the gentleman, being a stranger, was simply asking for information’s sake only, and had no ulterior object in view.”

“I agree with you, O’Brien,” interrupted the third party, who was named Burk, and who had been in the saloon during the period Greaves was present, “there can be nothing good in so cunning a face; but what is the real news to-night, and have you heard from New York or Buffalo?”

“I have harde from both places,” returned Tom, “and everythin looks well; but how are things here, and are you all prepared to assist the invading army when they cross the lines; and what number of men can we fairly count upon?”

“It has, I believe, been ascertained beyond a shadow of doubt,” replied Burk, “that there are upwards of one hundred thousand men throughout the Provinces who would at once rush to arms if they found the flag of the Irish Republic firmly planted at any one point within our borders; while it is known or believed, that more than twice that number would follow in their wake, if Toronto was once in the hands of the invaders. In fact, Toronto and Montreal once taken, the day is ours, for we should have the French almost to a man, no matter what Monsieur George Etienne or Master John Alexander may say to the contrary. Canada is evidently tired of British rule, and is only kept from kicking over the traces by a pack of government officials who hold the purse strings, and a subsidized press that destroys the homogeneity of the people, by making them doubt each other, and impressing every man disaffected to the Crown, with the idea that every other individual Colonist, or nearly so, is opposed to him. In this way, the sentiment of independence which underlies the nine tenths of our population is obstructed and embarrassed, and one man prompted to look with distrust upon another, although both may entertain precisely the same sentiments in relation to the desirability of throwing off the British yoke. As to how the army stands, Nick here can tell you more about that than I can.”

“The army,” said Barry, “is just as you might expect it to be. The Irish who compose it in part, are, as you know, not British soldiers from choice, but from necessity. They had no resource between starvation and a red coat; so that their oath of allegiance to the English Crown may be said to have been exacted from them under pain of death. For ages, their country had been devastated and plundered by the power that now holds them in special thrall, and the means of existence wrested from them through the inhuman exactions of a tyrannical government. Their name and race had been banned, their humble homesteads razed to the ground, and their families scattered, naked and hungry, throughout the length and breadth of the land, or exiled to foreign shores. The stranger had stolen in on their hearthstone, robbed them of their lands, goods and chattles, usurped their powers of local legislation, and then closed every door to preferment against them, leaving them without a hope or a crust for the future, on their own shores. Under this horrible pressure, thousands of them necessarily gave way and fell victims to those gaunt recruiting sergeants of the government—Hunger and Rags. Unable to earn wherewithal to keep body and soul together at their own doors, or within their own borders, and perceiving that the commerce, the manufactures and all the native resource of their country were crushed to the earth, beneath the relentless heel of the oppressor, they fell into the pit-fall dug for them by an accursed perjurer and traitor, and, in obedience to the first law of nature, assumed her livery, and swore allegiance to her flag. But think you that either God or man attaches the slightest importance to an oath exacted under such circumstances? Here am I, Nick Barry, now in the service of the usurper, and driven into it with tears in my eyes and rebellion in my heart, and do you suppose that I regard my oath as other than an additional incentive to plot the downfall of the infamous tyrant and robber who hounded me into swallowing it, and who, to-day, keeps the girl I love out of her mother’s property, that, on a mere technicality, was laid hold of, and thrown into chancery, by a villainous and traitorous relative, long in the secret service of the government at home, when he found the poor, young thing an orphan, and without a wealthy friend in the world to back her, and that too, upon a claim that hadn’t a leg to stand upon, as everybody knew? My soldier-life, and his continued absence in England, prevented my meeting the villain before he died; but as he has left the suit to his son, who, I learn, is no better than he was himself, and is also a great hanger on about the Castle of Dublin, I am in hopes of one day or other meeting this same gentleman, who purports to represent the old villain in this case, when, no matter how the chancery suit may go, I shall hold him to a severe reckoning for the injustice and hardships to which she has been so long subjected through their joint instrumentality. But why should she complain any more than Tom there, whose father’s side of the house, once powerful and wealthy, in the west of Ireland, have been all but beggared through the same infamous government, and their accursed agents, who had plundered them of every acre they possessed, and exiled the bravest and best of them to these distant shores?”

These few observations were made with an earnestness and vehemence that showed how fierce and hostile the blood that boiled in the veins of the speaker. Nor was there any appeal from the inexorable logic of his remarks. From the inhuman manner in which England has, for seven centuries preyed upon the vitals of Ireland, and plundered and expatriated her children, the latter are morally absolved from all allegiance or fidelity to her, no matter what the circumstances of their plighted faith. No man should be bound by oaths or obligations, to maintain the supremacy or defend the interests of a tyrant, exacted under an inhuman pressure or in the presence of such an alternative as the poor Irish recruit is subject to, namely, that of enlisting or starving. How can any Irish soldier, possessed of a single spark of pride or patriotism, and wearing the queen of England’s livery to-day, be other than the deadly enemy of the representative of a people who have laid his country waste, murdered his kindred and left him and millions of his race without a roof to cover them on their own native shores? How can he gaze with any degree of enthusiasm or pleasure upon the blood-stained rag that waved over Mullaghmast, that was perjured at Limerick, and that endorsed with its baleful glare all the demoniacal atrocities of the Penal Laws? “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God”—therefore the children of Ireland who have been so long trodden in the dust under the feet of an usurper, are but obeying the dictates of heaven and of humanity, when, by every means within the boundaries of civilization, they endeavor to encompass not only their own redemption from the bonds of the oppressor, but the total destruction of his power in every connection. Ireland owes no allegiance to England. For seven hundred years she has been crying out against the colony of foreign bayonets that have kept her in bondage and reduced her to beggary. For one single hour, throughout the whole of that long period, she has never voluntarily accepted the condition of her thraldom, or bowed submissively beneath the British yoke. She therefore cannot be regarded in the light of a conquered nation, but must be looked upon as still engaged in the deadly and mortal contest, whose first field was fought long years ago, between the Anglo-Norman freebooters and the Fenians of Cuan-na-Groith, or the Harbor of the Sun, when Strongbow, at the instance of the second Henry, made an unprovoked descent upon her shores.

“Yes,” replied Tom, when Barry had finished, “both I and mine have felt the cruel fangs of the despoiler; but, sure, where is the use of singlin out ourselves, when the whole of the thrue native Irish—which manes the nineteenth twintieths of the kingdoms-are jist as badly off. The quarrel is not yours nor mine, nor the grievances naither. Both belong to every man, woman and child possessed of a pure dhrop of Irish blood in their veins; for all have suffered alike, as far as that is consarned. And, now, all that has to be done on the head of it, is jist to wait the nick of time that we are all expectin, and then, with one well directed and united blow, dash the tyrant to the ground on this side of the Atlantic, and thrust to Providence, the sympathy of the great American people and our own sthrong arms and hearts for the rest.”

“Quebec and the fort beyond there,” observed Burk, “may give us some trouble; but further than this, from what has been ascertained of the Province generally, there is little to be apprehended. The intimate business relations and the intermarriages between the Canadians and the people of the United States, will exercise a most powerful influence in the case, while the manner in which both the English and Canadian Governments fomented the recent civil war on the other side of the lines, cannot fail to have embittered the American people against the British Flag, wherever it is to be found. The treacherous attack of England upon the existance of the Republic, in subsidizing the South with arms and money, and in destroying, as she did for a considerable period, the American carrying trade, through the instrumentality of pirates built and fitted out in her own ship-yards and docks, will now afford the American government an opportunity of paying her off in kind, through permitting Fenianism to pursue its course without interruption, until the Provinces become part and parcel of the Union, when they have served as a basis of operation for the purpose of fitting out expeditions against the arch enemy of Ireland and of human freedom, and contributed to the final redemption of that oppressed country from the bonds in which it has so long lain. Surely, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander; and if England, through the House of Commons, cheered the Alabama when her destructive qualities were described before that body by Mr. Laird, and, after having built the pirate, sent her out to make war upon the North when it was in sore trouble—surely, I say, America will not be over anxious to throw obstructions in the way of any party who may take in hand the chastisement of such an infamous power, no matter what the grounds of the quarrel. But when it comes to be understood that for the last ninety years, and up to a very recent period, England has been the deadly defamer and the secret or avowed enemy of America and American institutions—when it comes to be understood, that the statesmen, the business men and the wives and daughters of the citizens of the American Commonwealth, ever since the immortal Washington won the day for the oppressed of the whole world, have been subjected to the sneers and jibes of the English aristocracy and press, and held up to the ridicule of despotic Europe—when this comes to be understood, I repeat, in connection with the fact, that the cause of Ireland is the cause of human liberty and of republican institutions, there will be but little fear of America stepping out of her way to uphold the skull and cross-bones of St. George, either on this or on the other side of the Atlantic ocean, or, in fact, in any portion of the globe.”

“Nor will the clear-sighted children of the Republic be cajoled into a friendly attitude towards this blood-thirsty dastard, because that, in the feebleness and fear that have now overtaken her, she essays to gloze over the infamous acts of which she stands convicted before the nations, and assumes an air of friendship towards them. Had the Union fallen, through her infernal machinations, not a city throughout her dominions but would have blazed with joyful illuminations at the result; while her government would again introduce the impressments of 1812. Even when the slightest reverse was suffered by the arms of the North, the news was heralded throughout the whole of England with tokens of the most intense satisfaction; while both her people and statesmen took a fiendish delight in referring to the Commonwealth as “the late United States!” All this, I say, will influence, and ought to influence, America in favor of the independence of Ireland, and prevent the American people from regarding the present pusillanimous blandishments of John Bull as other than simply the result of cowardice, and an attempt to propitiate a great power that had survived his infernal machinations, and now looms up a just and mighty avenger before him. So long then, as England is permitted to hold Ireland, that is battling for her rights, in chains, or to taint permanently the pure atmosphere of this free continent, so long will the Stars and Stripes shine with subdued lustre, and the memory of the immortal heroes of ‘76 be but half honored, by those who are pledged to defend it to the death in the sight of both God and man.”

“As to Quebec and the other garrisons down this way,” observed Barry, “when Hamilton and Toronto are in the hands of the Army of the Irish Republic, they will be easily managed. None of the strongholds are proof against Irish sympathizers, in their vicinity. This I know to be true. Every genuine Irishman within easy hailing distance of the garrison at Quebec, has more than one tried friend within its walls; and so of the other strongholds along the St. Lawrence and lakes. But supposing, for argument’s sake, that any of those forts should take it into its head to stand a siege, where would it be when invested with such an army as Fenianism can now put into the field, composed of thousands upon thousands of veterans who are still grim with blood and smoke from the terrible fields of the South? What, too, would your militia do, with their holiday legs and maiden swords, against the men who fought at Cold Harbor, Gettysburg or Bull Run? Why the one-fourth of the force which it is said Fenianism has at its command, would sweep Canada like a tornado from Sanwich to Gaspe, and be recruited every yard of the road, besides; while the instant one signal victory was won by them, the government of the United States would at once acknowledge them as belligerants. This, I believe, is the true state of the case; and if the Fenian organization across the lines, and here amongst us, possess honest, brave and competent leaders, the overthrow of England in the Provinces cannot fail to be achieved; for, after all, she has no secure footing in the hearts of the masses, and enjoys nothing but a mere official existence here, under the protection of her guns, and through the instrumentality of a corrupt government and a hireling press. But as it is getting well up in the small hours, and as I feel I need some rest, I think I’ll take another tumbler, if you only join me, and then turn in.”

CHAPTER III.

When young Barry spoke of the girl of his love, he referred to Kate McCarthy, now in her twentieth year, and certainly one of the most beautiful Irish girls that had emigrated to America for many a long day. Kate and he had been schoolfellows and neighbors from their infancy, and, as they grew up, were regarded as a sort of “matter of course match,” from the fact, that they were always together, and apparently cut out for each other. They were both natives of the county Leitrim, and born on the banks of the Shannon, in the sweet little town of Drumsna. It was by the beautiful waters of this noble river that they first felt that impassioned glow that colors all the after life of man or woman, and which is as different from the feelings that characterize early boy or girlhood, as the noon-day solar blaze is from the cold and placid beams of the pale new moon. There is one point at which the true passion of love, in all great hearts, leaps into fierce and instantaneous existence. There may be many imperceptible approaches to it in some cases, we know, but out of these it is possible to turn aside. When the hour arrives, however, in a single moment the storming party, under one wild impulse, unknown before, mounts the ramparts of the heart, and, after a moment’s sweet confusion, the garrison falls and is surrendered forever into the hands of the enemy. And thus it was with our hero and heroine. Although they had long been the dearest of friends and constant companions—although they had long felt that the happiness of the one was necessary to that of the other, the great secret of their existence was never fully revealed to them, until they felt they were about to be separated from each other for an indefinite period; Kate to accompany her only relatives to America and poor Barry to enter the British army, under a pressure of poverty too dreadful to relate. As already intimated, the prospects of both had been blighted through oppression and villainy, brought to bear upon them by distant relatives, who were the infamous agents of a still more infamous government. The case of Nick, although sore enough in its way, was not so heartrending as that of Kate. He was of a sex fitted to wrestle with the storms of life, but she, proud and brave as she was, occupied a different position. Fortunately for both, however, through the instrumentality of a small pittance set aside by the Courts in her case, and a kind relation in that of Barry, their education was far above their pecuniary pretensions, so that at the age of twenty Kate was really an accomplished and refined girl, while her lover, at that of twenty-five, was a dashing young fellow, with a well stored mind and quite as capable of acquitting himself agreeably in society as any man, no matter what his rank, in the regiment to which he belonged. It was, then, in consequence of his education that he was looked up to by his comrades; although neglected and studiously kept in the back grounds by some of the officers of his company, who, viewing his attainments through the medium of their English spectacles, closed the door of preferment against him, and never suffered a single stripe to appear on his jacket. With as good blood in his veins as the best of them, and with a sense of the wrongs inflicted upon his country by the government whose abettors they were, he could never bring himself to stoop to the fawning and servility through which the lower grades of rank are attainable, only in the service; and thus, it was that, from first to last, he was viewed with an eye of suspicion by his superiors, who regarded him as an incorrigible young Irishman, who, notwithstanding that he wore the uniform of a British soldier, had no love for the service or the interests it represented.

Barry entered the army under the most terrific pressure only. He found that Kate and her friends were destined for America, and being himself, at the period, totally destitute of funds and without the means of realizing them speedily, in a moment of desperation he enlisted in a regiment that was under sailing orders for that country, in the hope of being stationed somewhere near the being he loved, and of being able, at least, to keep up a constant and unbroken correspondence with her until fortune should turn the wheel in his favor. And so he enlisted and parted from Kate and her friends, to follow her in a short period across the Atlantic, and renew his vows of love and affection upon another shore.

The ship that had borne her away from his view had been scarcely two days at sea, when the deadly intelligence reached his ear that the sailing orders of his regiment had been countermanded, and that instead of proceeding to Quebec, it was to sail for Malta, where it was likely to remain for perhaps a couple of years. This dreadful news almost annihilated him. He had made a sacrifice to no purpose, and was now bound hand and foot beyond the hope of redemption. Before Kate and he parted, he had agreed to write her to Quebec, in care of a friend, if anything should occur that might postpone the sailing of his regiment, or that portion of it that was for foreign service; and now the dreadful opportunity arrived, when he found himself called upon to convey to her the intelligence, that not only was the sailing of the regiment postponed, but its destination altered. In due course the fatal disclosure reached her, and almost deprived her of life and reason. In the space of one brief hour she passed through the agony of years. The being she loved, in the burning ardor of his young soul, had hastily—thoughtlessly sacrificed his freedom; and all for her! It had been a sufficient dagger to her soul to see him attired in the blood-stained uniform of the enemies of her country, yet she knew that he had been driven by the most inexorable circumstances to assume the hated garb. But now he was overtaken with twofold desolation—he was a slave, and beyond the reach of one kind word of solace from her, for whom he had sacrificed all, save and except that which might be borne to him, through the ordinary channels, across the trackless deep.

Racked as she was with those torturing reflections, and while the first wild burst of grief was yet rolling down her cheeks, she determined to begin her lone, young widowhood by instantly writing to him and bidding him hope. In this epistle, all the nobility of her true heart and nature blazed forth so transcendently, and with such fierce, womanly fervor, that the moment it reached the hands of the young soldier the light was re-kindled within him, and he at once set about procuring his discharge, or rather realizing the means of effecting his release from the bonds into which he had allowed his pure ‘though ungovernable passion to betray him. His education, as already observed, was most excellent, and now, when off duty, he turned it to good account, and slowly but surely began to add daily to what trifle he was able to save from his paltry pay, in the hope of yet commanding a sufficient sum to purchase his freedom and enable him, ultimately, to sail for America. In this way, and during the two years he was stationed at Malta, he spent his spare moments, being throughout that whole period particularly fortunate in keeping up what was life to him, an unbroken correspondence with his beloved.

At the expiration of three years, having been quartered, on his return from the Mediterranean, for the last one, in England, at length came the welcome and startling intelligence, that the regiment, now indeed, was to proceed forthwith to Canada, where it would be likely to remain for a considerable period. In a delirium of joy he communicated the happy intelligence to his love, and had just time to receive a hurried epistle in reply, in which the very arms of the true-hearted and beautiful Kate seemed thrown open to receive him. For some months previously, however, she had been informing him, from time to time, of a very disagreeable position in which she had been placed, through the persistent attentions paid her by an Irish gentleman named Lauder, who, by some means or other, had so ingratiated himself with her relatives, as to win them over to urge his suit; and who was reputed to be a person of means. These hints, however disagreeable, were always accompanied by a renewal of the vows they had long since plighted on the banks of the Shannon, and the fervent assurance that no one living or yet to live should ever lead Kate McCarthy a bride to the altar, save her own Nicholas Barry.

When Kate and her relatives arrived at Quebec, they remained in that city but a short period, as they had friends at Toronto, as well as near Fort Erie and at Buffalo, in the State of New York, whom they were desirous of visiting, and near whom they had determined to settle permanently. Unfortunately for Barry, the more intimate guardians or relatives of Kate had become unfriendly to his suit ever since he entered the army; impressed, as they had become, with that Irish idea, that the red coat of a private soldier in the British service was the most disreputable that could be worn. In this light, therefore, they encouraged the advances of Lauder, in the hope that absence would so weaken the first love of Kate, as to induce her to yield ultimately to her new suitor. But they little new the girl with whom they had to deal; for when Lauder, under their sanction, made a formal declaration of his passion to her, she quenched his hopes, as she supposed, forever, by informing him that both her heart and her hand were previously engaged, and that were they even at her disposal, she should be quite unable to bestow them upon any gentleman for whom she did not and could not entertain a single particle of true love, although he might have secured her esteem. This rejection, however, did not, as she supposed it would, preclude the possibility of any further advances from such a quarter, for Lauder, nothing daunted, kept up the siege when and wherever he could, without giving absolute offense; so cunningly and intangibly did he still pursue the object set before him. At last, nevertheless, so constant were his visits at the house, and so permanent a footing was he getting in the estimation of her friends, that, after having resided at Toronto upwards of two years, she left it at the instance of one of the family, who, on their first arrival in America, had settled in Buffalo, to which city she proceeded, and in which she now took up her residence.

While in Toronto the thought struck her that she might be able to turn whatever abilities she had to account, in the hope of being able to accumulate sufficient funds to aid our young hero in purchasing his discharge, fearing, as she did, that his own opportunities, in this relation, would be greatly restricted. So with her needle, and through the instrumentality of a small private school, she ultimately found herself mistress of the required amount, and was about to forward it to Nicholas, at the very period when she received intelligence of his regiment being ordered to America. She therefore thought it better to wait until they met, as she had made up her mind to set out, when apprised of his arrival, for any place in which he might happen to be quartered, and there plan for their future and his freedom.

In due time Barry reached Quebec, and from thence was ordered, with his company, to the town in which we first encountered him. Here he was soon joined by the true-hearted Kate, who remained for a few days with her cousins, Big Tom and his sister. During this period it was decided that Nicholas should purchase his discharge when he found that there was any prospect of the regiment being called home. The reasons for his not at once availing himself of the freedom he knew he could obtain at any moment, need not now be referred to more minutely; and as Kate left him to return to Buffalo, just four months previous to the opening of our story, after having made more than one pilgrimage from the United States to spend a few days with her cousins as she averred, it was settled upon finally, that he should quit the service in the ensuing summer, when they should become man and wife, as well as residents of the great Republic of the United States of America.

The intimacy, then, between Big Tom and Nick, is now accounted for in a satisfactory manner; and thus it was, that whenever the young soldier got leave to spend a night out of the Fort, he invariably took up his quarters at the sign of the Harp, where he not only knew he was welcome on his own account, but was sure to find company that was agreeable to him, and sympathized with all his aspirations in relation to his poor, down-trodden country.

Kate McCarthy, as we have already said, was in her twentieth year at the time we were first introduced to O’Brien and his customers, and certainly, as previously intimated, a more lovely woman could scarcely be found in a day’s walk. Her face and figure were absolute mirages of beauty, while, if there could be such a thing as black sunbeams, her eyes and hair would have illustrated them to intensity. She was above the medium height, with a slightly olive complexion that harmonized superbly with the glorious orbs through which the pure light of her soul poured forth a mellow blaze, and the dark, heavy tresses that fell in shining masses upon her pearly shoulders. Nothing, too, could surpass the intensified loveliness of her soft, rounded arms, and exquisitely shaped hands and feet, while her delicious mouth and beautifully chiseled nose and ears were really mysteries of loveliness so rare, that few could entertain the idea that she who possessed them could have laid her whole heart at the feet of a common soldier, and that, too, when it was in her power to turn such charms to high account in the every day market of society. But she knew Nicholas Barry and the nobility of his nature, and was aware, in addition, that had he not, like herself, been the victim of foul play and of a government that fostered crime in its adherents, he would never have been constrained to swear allegiance to the flag he both hated and despised, or have been obliged to exchange the garb of the son of a true Irish gentleman for that which had so lowered him, in the eyes of her relatives at least. But rich or poor, in scarlet or homespun, he was all the same to her; and now that he was almost at her side, and master, in a measure, of his own fate, she only looked forward to the period when she should have a legal right to his protection, and to call him by that name which, beyond all others is the one that lies nearest a woman’s heart.

The relative and his wife with whom Kate lived in Buffalo, were, in reality, noble and true-hearted people. They had known Nicholas from his childhood, and had always loved him for his manliness and bold struggles to gain some position at home in which he might be able to realize a sufficiency to maintain both himself and the girl of his love, before he led her to the altar. They had witnessed his repeated failures when he applied for any vacant situation where his education could be turned to account, and felt for his dire disappointment upon many an occasion when he was denied even a subordinate office in connection with the management of the large property that had once belonged to his family. With pain and anger they saw his praiseworthy exertions baffled at every turn, and, unlike the rest of their relations, discovered more of his self-sacrificing spirit still, in the desperate step he took for the purpose of joining his betrothed upon a foreign shore—a step which they would have gladly prevented, had their own slender means been sufficient to have transported him with them to their new home. Moved by this spirit of kindness and esteem, these worthy people were the very main-stay of Kate in the hour of her sorest trial, and now that Barry was near her once more, they entered heart and hand into all her projects, and were delighted to know that his discharge should be purchased before his regiment was ordered to leave the colony.

It must not be presumed, however, that Kate, since her arrival in America, had permitted herself to be a burden, in even the slightest degree, upon any of her friends or relations. Far from it; from the moment that they became settled at Toronto, up to the hour of Nicholas’ arrival in the colony, she not only supported herself through her industry and perseverence, but contributed, in a degree, to the maintenance of some of them also. Of course, in view of the all-absorbing object she had before her, regarding her lover, she could not be expected to do much in this latter relation; yet she did what she could, and so satisfied her pride and her conscience. Sometimes the recollection of the long and weary chancery suit would obtrude itself upon her, but only to provoke a hopeless and languid smile, prompted by the conviction that her enemy, whom she had never seen, and who had recently succeeded to the claims of his father—Philip Darcy, now but a few months dead—had too much influence with the government and its legal minions, to permit her to indulge in the slightest hope, that, were the case decided tomorrow, it could be otherwise than against her. Consequently, it mattered but little to her whether she was worsted by Philip the elder or Philip the younger; so, in this way, she now invariably disposed of the unpleasant matter. Yet, she felt, notwithstanding, deeply and bitterly upon the subject: and knew that she was the victim of a most diabolical plot; but she did not permit this to interfere with her daily avocations, or induce her to sit down in apathetic sorrow, and repine over a fate that no effort of hers could influence in any degree whatever.

Still, as may be readily supposed, both from her education and a knowledge of her own personal wrongs, and those which had for centuries been inflicted upon the unhappy land of her birth, she was no friend or admirer of the government or people who had wrought her so much ruin in this connection. On this head she was most inexorable, and felt that it was the duty of every true Irishman and Irishwomen in existence, to conspire, as best they could, against a power which had plunged their race and country into such frightful ruin; and she believed, firmly, that, in so far as her native land was concerned, its children were justified in using any means by which they could rid themselves of a tyrant and usurper, who, in violation of every law, both human and divine, subjected them to sword and flame for ages.

It will be perceived, then, that both Kate McCarthy and Nicholas were influenced by the same just and deadly spirit against England; and that neither thought it otherwise than meritorious, to hurl that tyrant to the dust, at any time and under any circumstances. The iron had penetrated their souls; and now that rumors were afloat touching the intention of the great organization of Fenianism, which overspread the American Union, to make a descent upon the Canadas, with a view to destroying the power of England upon this continent, and ultimately rescuing Ireland from the grasp of the oppressor, Kate’s eye was lit, from time to time, with the most patriotic fervor; while the world could, at any moment, discover the true nature of the fame that burned within her soul, from the emerald sheen of the silken band which invariably bound up her raven hair, and encircled her snowy throat.

Once or twice she happened to encounter Lauder in Buffalo, so as to recognize him without the possibility of mistake; while on several occasions, she could not divest herself of the idea that he had just passed her in disguise; although she could not imagine what prompted him to such secrecy, when she never noticed him since she had left Toronto, or recognized him on the two occasions when she chanced to meet him in the public street. Yet, a strange presentiment seemed to impress her that he had not, after all her plainness with him, abandoned the idea of obtaining her hand, notwithstanding the repugnance she had always evinced towards him. Now, however, that Nicholas was almost within hail of her, and that her friends, in Buffalo at least, were true to her in every relation, she felt secure from whatever machinations her imagination conjured up; and, therefore, whenever the subject suddenly obtruded itself upon her thoughtful moments, she dismissed it as summarily; reassured by the conviction that she was totally beyond the reach of any schemes that might have been concocted in relation to her or her future.

For the purpose, however, of setting the matter at rest forever, she was resolved that her lover should leave the service now as early as possible; and, stimulated by this desire, on returning to her residence, one evening towards the middle of April of the year in which we first encountered him on the bridge leading from the Fort, she addressed a letter to Nicholas, urging him to leave the army as soon as practicable, assigning as a reason the presence of Lauder in Buffalo, whom she had, as she felt assured, again encountered or rather discovered in the vicinity of her residence, and adding a further reason, based upon the rumor, that the Army of the Irish Republic would soon move upon Canada, and that his regiment could not fail to be called out to oppose it—a circumstance that would, as she well knew, be the cause of more actual pain to him, than anything that could possibly occur in the discharge of what was termed his duty.

This letter Barry received the second day after it was written; and on consulting with O’Brien, at once set about procuring his discharge; but as the Colonel of his regiment had gone to the Lower Provinces, from which he was not to return for a week or two, the matter was left in abeyance until he should again arrive in town. In due course, however, he did return, and the necessary application being made, no objection was offered to granting the discharge, as Barry’s conduct had always been most unexceptionable since he entered the service.

In this way matters stood, then, on the night on which we found Big Tom in secret conclave with his two friends, Nick and Burk, in his own little sanctum; Nick having got leave to stay out until morning, as the officer in command informed him, it was probably the last request he should have the power of granting him.

CHAPTER IV.

An organization so wide-spread and so numerous as that of the Fenian Brotherhood, it was not to expected that all its members, without an exception, were good men and true; yet so rarely were traitors found among its ranks, that no patriotic confraternity of its magnitude had ever, in ancient or modern times, presented so pure a record in this relation. When we take into consideration the fact that, the insidious and subsidizing gold of England was brought to bear upon the frightful poverty of the masses that composed the organization in Ireland, as well as the temptations to treason held out by the government, through their agents in the Republic of the United States of America, the wonder is that there were not more Corydons and Masseys to do the work of the usurper, and betray the cause to which they had sworn fealty. However, there were traitors sufficient at work to cause great damage in individual cases, and send many a brave fellow into the gloomy depths of a British dungeon. Nearly all the injury in this connection, however, appears to have been done at home, as treason of this character was totally powerless under any foreign flag—or at least not so capable of direct mischief. From the first moment of the inception of the organization, the British and the Canadian governments had their paid spies in and outside the American press, who kept the authorities well informed as to all the particulars that transpired within the range of their observation or through other channels; but these disclosures were necessarily meagre and, in many cases, totally unreliable; from the circumstance that those disreputable parties, for the purpose of magnifying their importance, and securing further the patronage of their employers, colored and distorted facts so terribly, that scarce a line from their pens or a sentence from their lips was worthy even the slightest credence. Still, from time to time, some little rumor struggled to the surface, which pointed to treachery somewhere; and thus it was that the authorities of the organization were often placed awkwardly in relation to the idle though dangerous gossip which occasionally singled out this individual or that, as the party who had betrayed his trust. In the various cities along the American frontier, there was from time to time a good deal of this gossip—a circumstance that might have been quite easily accounted for; seeing that the inhabitants of some of these places were in what might be termed hourly intercommunication with the people of Canada; giving, in some cases, rise to suspicions, which were in the main without any foundation. This distrust, although affecting the stability or growing prosperity of the Brotherhood in scarcely any degree, had yet the effect of strengthening the hands of British sympathizers in the Union, and inducing them to resolve themselves into little coteries or societies—such as was hurriedly formed not long since under the influence and guidance of Mr. H——, of Buffalo, for the ostensible purpose of aiding destitute Canadians, but with the real design of keeping an eye upon Fenianism, and disclosing, as far as the members could divine, all its intentions, hopes and prospects, to the British government. Occasionally an emissary, direct from Great Britain, in the guise of a lecturer or tourist, visited these associations and received their report, which, as far as was practicable, he verified by personal observation, and through whatever reliable channels, he believed to be open to him. These emissaries have been supplemented by others of a somewhat different character, but all bearing upon the interests of England. In this latter case, however, it has been the direct unfriendly relations between the American government and that of Great Britain, which had stimulated the pilgrimages of certain individuals of this class to the shores of the great Republic. England perceiving that she had Fenianism to deal with on the one hand, and American hostility, regarding her infamous course during the late war, on the other, in her cowardly fears for the consequences, backed up her anti-Fenian agents, by sending out such persons as Mr. Charles Dickens and Mr. Henry Vincent, to prove to the citizens of the Commonwealth how friendly the sentiments that England had always entertained for them, and how disasterous a thing it would be to both peoples, should a war, under any circumstances, be permitted to take place between them. Both these gentlemen, and others, distinguished and popular in their respective literary shades, went forth preaching peace and good will between the Saxons on the one side of the Atlantic and their so-called American cousins on the other. With an audacity the most barefaced and unaccountable, upon every possible occasion, opportune or otherwise, they wore the olive branch at their button-hole, and described in periods the most eloquent, the identity of blood and interests which characterized both nations, and which it were heinous to ignore. Notwithstanding that for ninety long years their infamous government had been indulging in the most heartless sneers, insults and injustice towards the press, the people and the executive of the United States—notwithstanding that during the late war every reverse of the arms of the Republic was hailed with heartfelt joy by the English party, both at home and in Canada, and that pirates were built and fitted out under the very eyes of the British Cabinet, and with the secret sanction of that corrupt horde, to make war upon American commerce and destroy the Union in the hour of its extremity—notwithstanding all this, we say, and maugre the kindred circumstance of subsidizing the South with money and arms so as to prolong the fratracidal conflict until both parties lay bloody and broken at the feet of English despotism, these able and smooth-tongued gentry had the accursed assurance to stand up in most of the principal cities of the Democracy, and assert broadly, that England was the true and tried friend of republican institutions and of the people who sustained them on the free continent of America. Under the liberal laws which accord freedom of speech to every man who touches the shores of the Republic, these men had, we know, a right to express, publicly or otherwise, their sentiments in this connection, how treacherous and untenable soever; but what we could never fathom, was the daring of any journal professing to be true to the interests of freedom or those of the Union, in endorsing those sentiments and setting them forth to the world as truthful and worthy the acceptance of every genuine American, no matter what his creed or party. An attempt so monstrous to stullify all past experience and ignore all history has never been made in any relation whatever; and the wonder is, that, few as they are, so many Americans have been led astray by it. To any individual, of even the most ordinary penetration, it must be obvious, that the present cringing and treacherous attitude assumed by England towards the American people, is but the mask of a foul and dangerous spirit, snatched up in a moment of mortal fear to be worn only until some opportune moment arrives when it can be thrown aside with safety, revealing the old, familiar, demoniacal scowl which lurked unaltered beneath its smiling exterior. America, to be true to herself, must beware of such false lights, of the press as these. They are for the most part subsidized by English gold, or so imbuded with English sentiment, that the interests of the Union are quite a secondary consideration with them. In evidence of the truth of this assertion, we have only to dwell upon the apathy with which these journalists regard the building up of a dangerous despotism upon our borders, in the very teeth of American traditions and sentiments, and in opposition to the feelings of the masses whom it effects more immediately, and who were not permitted by their tyrants to express a single opinion at the polls on so grave a subject as the total disruption or remodeling of the constitution under which they lived. Look at the expression of Nova Scotia on this head, and see how it reflects upon the course pursued by the great American people in relation to the confederation of the adjoining Provinces. Not long since the inhabitants of that section of the New Dominion set forth, in a memorial to the British government, that this same confederation was forced upon the people of the Canadas, through falsehood, bribery and the vilest fraud. And, yet, free and generous America, who assumes to be the day-star of freedom on this continent, and to the world, permitted this despotic measure to be enforced at her own threshold, and in relation to a people, thousands upon thousands of whom sympathized with her interests and institutions, and looked forward with longing eyes to the hour when the Stars and Stripes should float from every flag-staff and tower throughout the whole of the English possessions in the New World. Surely the missionary spirit of the Republic has not been best illustrated in this instance; nor can we discover now, how it is, that the authorities of the Union sit quietly playing at thumbs, while the Parliament of the Dominion is voting millions for the defenses of the new despotism, and framing projects that are intended to result in a line of impregnable forts from Sandwich to Gaspe, and at every point where it is possible for an invader to set foot upon their shores. Wait until false, foul and treacherous England can sit beneath the shadow of the guns of her infant monarchy, on the Canadian frontier, and then see if she does not begin to show her cloven foot anew. Let her once get a permanent foothold among the newly projected fortresses along the St. Lawrence and the Lakes, with Quebec as their key, and the peace and prosperity of America, as well as the stability of republican institutions, cannot be counted as secure, for a single day, from petty annoyance, or perhaps inroads of a more formidable character. This idea may, we know, be scouted by those who have a well grounded faith in the destiny of the American people and the power they undoubtedly possess in a naval and military point of view; but, after all, a gun is a gun and a garrison a garrison; and to allow an implacable and formidable enemy to possess herself of either, within range of our fire-sides, when we can prevent it, is what we should call courting the presence of a bombshell on our borders, that may at any moment be thrown into our midst.

Without dwelling further on this particular point, however, we may observe, that through some of the channels already referred to, the English government became aware, in 1865, that it was the intention of the Irish Nationalists in the United States to make a descent, at no distant day, upon Canada, and seize it as a basis of operations, with a view to carrying out their projects for the redemption of Ireland. In connexion with this information, they found, also, that the troops in Canada were largely interspersed with Irishmen, and it was consequently deemed necessary to send a secret agent to the Provinces to look into the case and report upon it, or rather upon the sentiment of the Irish element in the colony, whether in or out of the army, in relation to Fenianism. This they thought could be best accomplished through the instrumentality of a tried emissary of their own, as even from the Provincial Cabinet conflicting accounts were arriving constantly in relation to the all-important subject. In furtherance of this view, the Castle of Dublin was, of course, applied to, and a creature selected to do the work, who was not himself fully aware that his position was recognized by the imperial Cabinet so decidedly, but simply fancied himself in the capacity of a sort of trusty policeman, appointed by one of the Castle authorities, who was anxious to know for himself how the case stood on the other side of the Atlantic. This agent was one of the cleverest of his class, and possessed of the most consummate cunning, and a spirit of reckless daring but seldom evinced by members of his tribe. Already he had rendered substantial service to the Viceroy and to England, as an inveterate spy, and a scoundrel who had, on more than one occasion, distinguished himself in the witness box. In addition to his investigations in Canada, he was instructed to extend the line of his observations to the United States also, and to move from point to point, as his own judgment might dictate in the premises. He was, of course, furnished with ample means to carry out successfully the project intrusted to him; and although but little faith could be placed in his integrity, so far as the disposal of the funds put in his hands were concerned, yet, by an opportune circumstance, connected with his own personal interest, and overriding any sum that was entrusted to him, the Castle was enabled to hold him in check, no matter how he might be tempted, or where he chanced to move. With his activity and fidelity thus insured, this miserable wretch, who went in Dublin by the name of Philip the Spy, was despatched on his mission, and, in due coarse arriving at Quebec, set about it in his usual cautious and conning manner. He visited the Citadel as a stranger, under the ordinary pass from the Town Major, and soon made himself agreeable in the dark, low canteen among the soldiers. Whenever he thought he discovered a young and inexperienced Irishman among the rank and file, he was unusually pleasant and communicative. With such a companion he always moved about the garrison, descanting upon its force and power, and imperceptibly stealing into his good graces, until he found some opportunity of making an apparently accidental enquiry touching the information he was desirous of obtaining. In this way he became possessed of the knowledge that even Quebec held within its impregnable walls many a man who was far from being the true friend of England, and who, as he surmised, waited the opportunity of not only deserting her flag, but betraying her stronghold into the hands of her enemies. In this state of things he could not but discover the truthfulness of the beautiful line of the poet, “Coelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt,” for he perceived that the mighty waters of the great Atlantic were insufficient to wash out the blood stains from the skirts of England in relation to Ireland, or to remove the deep hatred of the exiled children of the latter, towards a tyrannical power that had held them in bitter thrall so unjustly and so long.

Satisfied of this, and of the additional fact, that the garrison was invulnerable from the river side only, and that much of the artillery that manned the citadel was all but worthless, on the pretense of being a friend to the cause of Irish freedom and a deadly enemy to England, he learned that not only were there many Fenian sympathizers within the walls of the garrison, but that the city outside was literally alive with similar friends, some of whom were to be found among the French population, who had never forgotten England’s treatment of the First Napoleon, or her conquest of Canada in the days of Wolf These he knew himself were sore points with the Lower Canadians, and likely to bear bitter fruit in relation to English interests in America, one day or other. He perceived also that these facts, taken in connection with the unfriendly feeling which England had engendered in the United States, through the Alabama piracies and secret subsidies to the South during the war that had just closed, would, tend to both foster and embolden Fenianism, until it grew almost into an institution in the New World, or became, at least, a leading idea with no inconsiderable portion of both the Canadian and American people. He knew that every civilized nation on the face of the earth, save England herself, sympathized with the lamentable condition of the country to which he himself was a traitor; and such being the case, he felt how easy it would be on the part of these sympathizers, to find a means of justifying almost any measure that might be adopted against the usurper, by the organization at home and abroad. He saw and felt all this, and thus it became him to be doubly cautious, as he could not but understand, that were his mission divined by those whom he was now hourly betraying into positions of death or danger, it would go hard with him indeed. In fact, the idea struck him, that England, with all her boasting, was but little better than a camp in America; and that, as in Ireland, she was surrounded here also, by a hostile although a less demonstrative population.

And, certainly, a truer deduction than this has never been drawn from any premises whatever. The nine tenths of the loyalty of Canada towards the British Crown, is superficial and terribly unreliable. Subtract the official and the Orange element from the masses, and they would drift at once into the arms of the United States. The events of 1837 prove that a strong undercurrent of American feeling exists in the colony, and various subsequent disclosures prove that it is even now only restrained by circumstances. When we find Canadian representatives on the floor of the House of Assembly, threatening England with an appeal to Washington in a certain connection, and when we see Americans filling some of the highest offices in the Dominion, and sitting at the Council Table with the representatives of royalty, we may be sure that the interests of Great Britain are not in safe keeping in such an atmosphere, and that such persons can always be brought to see how necessary it is to the material welfare of the inhabitants of the Canadas that they should become part and parcel of the free and prosperous Republic of the United States. They cannot fail to see, that in their present dependent position,—lying, as they are, in the grasp of an English aristocrat, unacquainted with their wants and wishes, and who sympathizes only with the Crown, their trade, their commerce, and their internal resources must suffer to a frightful extent. So long as they are outside the pale of the Union and under the British flag, so long will a mighty war cloud hang upon their borders, that is liable to roll in upon them at any moment. The fact is fixed and unalterable, that the people of Ireland have secured for all time a permanent footing on this continent, where their numbers, wealth and influence have become irresistible, touching any project that they may entertain within the limits of the American Constitution. We say the American Constitution, for to this they have sworn fealty, and its maintenance is to them a matter of the first importance—a matter of life and death; from the fact, that it is to its generous provisions and the liberal spirit of its framers and their descendents, as well as to the kind sympathy of the American people in general, that they now owe their all. Were it not for the noble stand against tyranny taken by the heroes of 1765, and the subsequent glorious career of the country they had freed from the grasp of the English tyrant, Ireland should be still laden with chains the most hopeless; but, now that free America has influenced her to higher aspirations than she had ever felt previously in relation to human liberty and just and enlightened government, it is probable that she shall become the first fruits of American institutions on the despotic side of the Atlantic, and raise her bright republican head, in the midst of the hoary tyrannies of Europe, a glorious monument to the genius of American liberty and power, as well as to the memory of the immortal heroes of the war of Independence, who first taught manhood to the nations, and hurled to the dust, beneath their feet, the foul and blood-stained braggart who had sought to build up her despotic rule upon their virgin shores. In no way can America so justify the purity and sincerity of her soul in relation to her institutions, as by hurling them against the despotisms of the old world, and diffusing amongst its peoples, wherever she can with any degree of propriety, the blessings they are so eminently calculated to impart. And no point stands more invitingly open at the present moment for an experiment so indispensable to the true prestige of her power and greatness, than Ireland. Self-evident as the fact is, that that country has for generations been kept in slavery at the point of the bayonet, and plundered and starved by an accursed despot and her own deadly enemy, too, she can with the greatest possible ease move in the direction of breaking those galling bonds, and wreathing the poor, fleshless limbs, so long lacerated by them, with the flowery links which so bind her own glorious children in one harmonious and invincible whole. So long as Ireland lies groaning beneath the heel of the usurper, so long shall America have failed in her mission, and her duty towards God and man. She cannot be truly great, and sit down beneath her own vine and fig tree, listlessly enjoying the blessings of liberty, peace and plenty, while her kindred and friends lie in chains on the opposite side of the Atlantic, or while the infamous flag of the despot who oppresses them, and who but recently sought to stab her to the heart, floats in triumph on her very borders. Both heaven and humanity demand something more at her hands; and if actuated by no higher motive than that of mere self-preservation, or of providing against a rainy day, we would advise her, in view of the powerful armaments and the ingrained antagonisms which characterize Europe in every direction, to assist in establishing one friendly power at least on the shores of the Old World, which, in the hour of need, would make common cause with her in the interests of freedom, justice and truth. This, and the fact of the attempt now being made by England to build up an armed despotism in the New Dominion of Canada, are, in our humble opinion, matters of the deepest moment to the great American people; while we are equally convinced, that, should they neglect to avail themselves of their right to interpose wherever human suffering of the most heart-rending character obtains under the sway of a tyrant, or where the peace and security of a whole continent is threatened, by portentous and aggressive undertakings on its confines, the day will arrive, and that speedily, when they will be afforded a bitter opportunity of regretting their criminal apathy and neglect, without the power of atoning for either.

CHAPTER V.

Although Kate had, as we have already stated, encountered Lauder on more than one occasion in Buffalo, without any very uneasy feeling as to his unpleasant proximity, yet she was not totally devoid of suspicion that she was, in some way or other, the cause of his presence in that city. True, she had rejected his heart and hand in the most decided manner; but then there was something about the man so obtrusive and yet so cunning, that at times she could have wished herself totally beyond has reach or hopes, as the wife of the noble young fellow she loved so ardently. When in Toronto, she had been sorely tried by the insidious attacks and insinuations of her persecutor, bearing upon the character and vocation of Nicholas, regarding which he appeared to be exceedingly well informed. He spoke of the uniform faithlessness of soldiers in general—their wretched mode of life and morals, together with the stigma that invariably attached to the wife of any individual who wore a private’s coat in the service. In addition, he seemed to be conversant with the pecuniary embarrassments of Kate, as well as with the circumstances of the chancery suit, and, as he averred, the settled opinion at home, that it would be soon decided, and, without any possible doubt, in favor of the son of Philip Darcy. All this was heart-rending in the extreme to the poor girl; but yet her faith never faltered for a single moment in the truth and fidelity of her lover; and what cared she for aught else in the world, so long as he was left her without spot or blemish. Observing the foothold that Lauder had in the house and estimation of her relatives, she did not feel herself at liberty to treat him with all the contempt and severity that he deserved; so that she was too often, for appearances sake and out of respect for the feelings of those under whose roof she was, constrained not to notice in anger much that had escaped his lips regarding Nicholas, or, rather, the possible character which he had turned out to be under the baneful influence of a soldier’s life. When, however, she accepted the hospitality and kindness of that portion of the family who had taken up their residence in Buffalo, and who were the staunchest friends of young Barry, she, at once, cut the acquaintance of her rejected suitor, and, as already observed, passed him once or twice in the street without deigning to notice him.

This probed Lauder to the quick, and aroused all the fiend within him; and now that Barry had reached Canada, he determined to work in some way the ruin of either the one or the other, in order to make their union impossible, were even the most revolting crime necessary to that end. While dwelling on this subject, every vestige of humanity disappeared from the heart and face of the wretch who would encompass such ruin, and that, too, in the case of two individuals who had never injured him in thought, word or act. He was slighted and rejected by the only woman on earth that he cared to marry, and he would be avenged at even the risk of his life. He would dog her footsteps were she to move to the uttermost ends of the earth, until an opportunity to put his infernal plans in operation arrived; and as he had abundance of means at his command, he would enlist in his service those who would not hesitate to sell their souls for gold. Moved by this diabolical impulse, he followed her to Buffalo, and there made the acquaintance of two unmitigated villains who kept a low gambling house in one of the vilest streets in the city, and who were capable of any atrocity known to the annals of crime. These two vagabonds were already refugees from Canadian justice, having been concerned in one of the bank robberies so frequent in the Provinces, and had an accomplice of their own stamp on the Canadian frontier, not far from their present den, to whom they were in the habit of secretly forwarding goods stolen on the American side, to be kept until the excitement regarding the robbery had subsided, and an opportunity presented itself for disposing of them in some part of the Province where detection would be impossible. Under the cover of night one or the other of these wretches frequently stole across the lines and visited this locality, where he remained concealed until a fitting period occurred for returning to his old haunt.

Of this stamp were the two persons whom Lauder now took into his confidence and employment in relation to the abduction of Kate McCarthy from her friends, and her transportation into Canada to some place of secrecy and of safety, until he should be able to force her into an alliance with him, or failing in this, make such a disposition of her as should, at least, place an eternal barrier between her and Nicholas. Among their friends and acquaintances these two villains were known as “black Jack” and the “Kid,”—the former as forbidding a specimen of the human race as ever breathed the vital air. He was low and thick set, with a neck like a bull, and a frame of prodigious strength.. His nose was broad and flat, his month large, his ears of immense size, his forehead low and retreating, while the breadth between his ears at the back of his head was inconceivable.

His companion in crime, the Kid, in so far as external appearance was concerned, was his intensified antipodes. He was slightly formed and of rather prepossessing appearance; and were it not for a sinister expression of his full watery, grey eyes, remarkable when excited by anger, and some coarse and sensual lines about his mouth, perceptible upon all occasions, he might pass unnoticed among the thousands that crowded daily the locality in which he lived. He was the general, Jack the army—he plotted, Jack executed; and thus it was, that, through his consummate cunning, they had both been enabled to avoid justice so long. They ostensibly kept a sort of drinking saloon, from which they professed to banish all disreputable characters, and which, through the clear-headedness of the one, and the awe in which the great personal strength of the other was held, was unusually free from the disreputable rows and scenes that generally characterize such places.

If the Kid and Black Jack differed from each other in personal appearance, they were nearly if not quite as much opposed to each other in dress. Jack’s attire was of the very coarsest description, and always slovenly in appearance. No matter what the season of the year, he invariably wore a dark blue flannel shirt, a short, heavy over-coat, with huge, deep pockets, thick, iron-shod boots, coarse, loose trousers, and a huge, greasy, slouched, hat, of black felt, invariably pulled over his eyes when out through the city. The only difference as to the disposition of his attire, touching winter and summer, was, that during the former season he always served his customers with his slouched hat and jacket on, while throughout the warmest part of the latter, he was invariably to be found behind his dark, dingy bar, with his shirt sleeves tucked up and his collar unbuttoned and thrown open, displaying a pair of huge, swarthy arms, covered with coarse, black hair, and a broad and massive chest, presenting a similar aspect, and which exhibited all the characteristics, in this connection, of the most savage denizens of the forest. Such, then, were the personal appearance and the character of the two men whom Lauder now visited by stealth from time to time, but always in a disguise which defied detection, and which was made up with the most consummate skill.

Unconscious of all the danger that surrounded her, Kate still kept the even tenor of her way, happy in the prospect of soon becoming the wife of the man she loved; while Barry, on the other hand, felt but little apprehension as to any fears that she had expressed in relation to the proximity of Lander; believing, as he did, that she was totally beyond his reach or power, and that his presence in Buffalo was occasioned by some business not in any degree connected with her. What, he argued, had she to fear from any man whom she despised, and from whose society she had deliberately and pointedly estranged herself? The days of feudal abductions had passed away, and if in this practical age a woman refused to become the wife of any man, she had a perfect right so to do, and there the matter ended. Besides, was she not beneath the roof of her own relatives, who loved her with the sincerest warmth, and who were able to protect her until she could claim the shelter of his own breast, as he stood by her side the husband of her heart. All this went to reassure him, so that when he sat down to reply to the letter which urged him to procure his discharge at once, he wrote in the most cheering and happy manner, bidding her to be of good heart, that she was safe from the importunities and machinations of any individual who sought to gain her affections; but intimating, at the same time, that he should at once, or as soon as practicable, leave the army and as quickly as possible join her on the other side of the great lakes.

In the love that exists between two true Irish hearts that have been pledged to each other, deliberately and solemnly on the threshold of man and womanhood, there is often something so confiding, so unreasoning and so unselfish, as to put one in good humor with humanity. There is no country on earth in which the love of gain intermixes with the affections of the heart to so small an extent as in Ireland. In this relation we, from time to time, witness in the Green Isle such genuine and grateful glimpses of the better phases of human nature, that, no matter to what subsequent inconvenience and embarrassments they may tend, they, for the time being, at least, charm us into a recognition of something that is, after all, beautiful and truthful in our souls. Except where the inexorable tyranny of birth creeps in, our matrimonial alliances are, for the most part, purged of the cool calculation of Scotland, or the bread and beef considerations of the English. This may be censurable in us, and doubtless it is; but, still, the charge lies more against our heads than our hearts. It is a fact the most indisputable, that in England most of the marriages in high or low life are those of convenance, while in Ireland the contrary is the case. Even the poorest Irish girl in the land gives her hand only, where she can bestow her heart; nor, as a general thing, can any amount of wealth induce her to ignore her pride or affections in this connection; while, should her love be given to even the simplest peasant that ever stood by her milking pail, she is totally beyond the reach of temptation. On the part of both there is an out-going of souls in this direction that may be said to be peculiar to Ireland. Completely outside all physical accidents and circumstances, there is a commingling of spirit which ratifies a compact for all time, and lives in the future as well as the present. Stretching beyond the hoar, such souls are not dependent upon mere personal contact or intercourse for the vitality of the passion that animates them, for they are ever en rapport with each other, and clasped breast to breast wherever their individual physical organizations may be. In this manner they bid defiance to fate and all materiality; living on, undivided, and secure in the continuence of the power that binds them to each other. Such individualities become one spiritually—all their aspirations are identical—all their sentiments are the same, and so closely do they become united, that you cannot destroy the one without destroying the other. We know and feel, beyond any shadow of doubt, that there are beings whose loss or total annihilation we should be unable to survive, and if doomed to live, whose place could never be filled in our souls, throughout the endless ages of eternity. Hence the generous and beautiful, provision of the All Wise and All Good. To every human heart, that interprets His Laws aright and conforms to His will, he presents that beautiful counterpart which, although mysteriously foreign, is yet, so delightfully and essentially, a part and parcel of our two-fold nature.

In no country in the world, then, does this divine law of natural affinities prevail more than in Ireland; and in no case had it ever been more clearly illustrated than in the case of Nicholas Barry and Kate McCarthy; as each, if so inclined, could have sacrificed the other in forming a matrimonial alliance respectively, identified with what was believed, to be undoubted wealth. For the hand of Kate, long before she left her native land, there had been more than one suitor of means; while handsome Nick, previous to his entering the army, was an object of the warmest admiration on the part of many a damsel whose prospects were of the most flattering description. But all to no purpose; not one of the wealthy women was Kate McCarthy in the one case, and not a single well-to-do gentleman was Nick Barry, in the other. So this made all the difference; and Nick and Kate, without pausing to cast their horoscope, gave themselves to each other, as already described, by the banks of the Shannon—a river whose bright murmuring waters have reflected more beautiful eyes and manly forms than those of any other in Europe, or perhaps the world. Without a thought for the future at the moment of which we have already spoken, they plighted their faith for all time and eternity; and well they kept their vows; although previous to the arrival of Nicholas in America, they had been upwards of three years separated from each other-the one leading the life of a soldier in a sunny clime, and the other, on a far distant shore, hoping for the hour when they should be once more side by side.

When, however, our hero found himself the plighted lover of the being he adored, and discovered himself simultaneously separated from her toy the most cruel, unexpected and perverse fate, he bent, as previously observed, every energy towards effecting his release from the bonds he had assumed for her sake. He consequently, instead of wasting his hours in sullen and useless repining, set actively to work and kept both his mind and his body in a healthy condition; never losing confidence for a moment, in his own ability to secure freedom or permitting the hope to be shaken, that he should ultimately join the woman of his love in the new world, and there realize an independence for both. And here we may observe, that this feature in the character of Nicholas was one of the noblest and most dignified that could possibly distinguish any member of the race to which we belong. The world has been lost to many a man, from the fact of his not sitting down to look circumstances fairly in the face, with a full determination to grapple with them and give them a tussel for if wherever a good man and true places any reasonable and legitimate object before him, no matter how dark the clouds that surround him, in nine cases out often he achieves it. The grave error in this connection is, that finding our inability to move the great mass of our difficulties out of our road en bloc and at once, ignoring the lesson taught by the constant drop that wears the stone, we sit down overwhelmed, and never set sturdily about trying to remove it piecemeal. The most profusely illustrated lesson that heaven has yet taught to man, is that of industry and perseverence. Whether within the fragrant chambers of the golden hive, or in the kingdoms of the busy ant, or mid the curious nests that swing from forest boughs, we roam in thought, we find what perseverence can accomplish, and that too, by steps almost imperceptible in themselves. It is the individual atoms that build up the mighty and effective aggregate that overawes all opposition, and like an avalanche sweeps all resistance before it. The loftiest pyramid that throws its shadow over the desert to-day, and that dwarfs at its foot the beholder into the most incomparable insignificance, incapable of being removed in fragments not larger than a pea, from its present site to the other side of the globe; and the grandest structure ever erected by human hands, has been built up from almost imperceptible beginnings, into the imposing dimensions which so overshadow the admirer and excite in his bosom feelings of almost superstitious awe. So that look where we may, throughout the whole range of nature, of science or of art, we find tee lesson of industry and perseverence inculcated in the most impressive manner, and in a language that should reach and influence our spirit struggles to the core.

If less distinct than we have here delineated them, such were the sentiments and convictions that influenced the actions and conduct of our hero and heroine when fate had separated them. Moved by the same impulses, they both set about accomplishing the same end, and in the same manner. Barry’s pen and Kate’s needle flew at intervals; and the result, as already intimated, was, that each had accumulated a sum sufficient to effect this release from the army, and that it now was to be brought into requisition for the purpose of accomplishing that end.

Had Nicholas been made of that sort of stuff which, with the greatest possible degree of coolness, lays a friend or relative under contribution, he might have been able, through its instrumentality, to realize a sufficient sum to have taken him to America, at the period that Kate sailed, without having had recourse to the dreadful alternative of enlisting in the English army; but not being built of such questionable material, he bowed beneath the heavy yoke, believing, as he did, that however distasteful and derogatory to his feelings, it was more honorable and independent to be indebted to himself, even at so great a sacrifice, for the means of joining his beloved on the other side of the Atlantic, than to be constrained to traverse its trackless waste, weighed down with the conviction, that, for the purpose of accomplishing an object that could at least be honestly attained otherwise, he had deprived those whom he had left behind of that of which they themselves stood sorely in need. Besides, he felt satisfied from what he knew of himself, and the prospects open to even an industrious soldier on the shores of Canada, he should soon be able to relieve himself of his bondage, and stand erect once more, freed from the humiliation of the uniform he wore. But, as already seen, the fates were against him in the first moments of his military career; and for the time every fibre of his being was almost crushed beneath the most frightful tension to which could have been possibly subjected. How dreadful must have been the appalling intelligence of the countermand of his regiment to the Mediteranean, when it first fell upon his ear; and how sufficient was the awful announcement to crush any ordinary mortal. Yet, with the elasticity which is ever inseparable from a true and noble spirit, when the first crash of the news bore him almost to the earth, he steadily began to brace himself against it, and ultimately, though by slow and painful degrees, straightened himself beneath it, and, although it was not the less heavy, stood erect under it at last, and bore it squarely upon his shoulders.

Poor Kate, although brave, too, had at first almost given up hope, when, a few days after her arrival at Quebec, she learned the fatal intelligence contained in the letter already referred to; but soon perceiving, as he did, that nothing was to be achieved by useless murmuring or hopeless inactivity, she shook herself, as free as her strength would permit, from the dreadful incubus of the sorrow that bowed her to the earth, and turned whatever talents she possessed to good account; working night and day to accomplish the great and only desire of her heart, and trusting to heaven for the rest. In this way her constant and unwearied exertions lightened much of the load that could not have failed under less favorable promptings, to have crushed her completely, and have, in all human probability, consigned her to a premature grave.

And thus, we see, that these two brave young spirits had all but accomplished the wish of their hearts, at the period at which our story opens, and that they were now but simply awaiting the hour when Nicholas should be able to exchange the hated red jacket that he wore, for a dress more in consonance with not only his own feelings, but those of the being he so faithfully loved.

CHAPTER VI.

Whatever censure may be attached to any portion of the career of the founders of Fenianism, after the organization had become a recognized power on both sides of the Atlantic, we cannot divest ourselves of the settled impression, that the men who were mainly instrumental in calling it into existence and sustaining its infancy, were actuated by the purest motives. To be sure, Fenianism can scarcely be said to be the embodiment of a new idea, or the exponent of new principles; but, then, there was a masterly grouping of energies and sentiments in connection with it, which possessed the merit of originality, and which tended so largely, not only to popularize it, but to give it a foothold on every Irish national hearthstone. In the selection of the name by which the organization was to be distinguished, there was a clearness of judgment as well as a thorough acquaintance with the necessities of the case, that cannot fail to strike any impartial observer. Had the Brotherhood been organized under any commonplace appelation, or under any of the various names that had characterized the previous revolutionary societies of Ireland, the probability is, it would have long since fallen into line with those convivial associations, which content themselves with an annual exposition of the grievances of Ireland, over the short leg of a turkey, a “bumper of Burgundy,” and that roar of lip artillery, against the usurper, which dies away in a few maudlin hiccups, about two o’clock in the morning, to be revived only at the expiration of another twelve months. Under the burden of any commonplace name, such, we say, might have been the fate of the organization ere this; and so we regard the knowledge and genius which obviated the possibility or rather the probability of failure in this relation, as entitled to prominent consideration and respect. To the superficial observer, this may appear of very little moment in connection with a subject of such magnitude; but let it be understood, that we are influenced by seeming trifles and the surface of things to an extent far greater than we ourselves are willing to confess. Notwithstanding the oft repeated query, “what’s in a name?” there is a great deal in a name. Let two strangers, Mr. Harold Bloomfield and Mr. John Smith send in their cards together to an important official, of whom they expect to get an audience separately, and the chances are nine out of ten in favor of Mr. Bloomfield’s being granted an interview first. This, we apprehend, holds good in a thousand kindred instances, and in no way has the supposition been more clearly verified than in relation to the name bestowed upon the organization under consideration.

The name “Fenian” is of very remote antiquity, and appears to be most comprehensive in its signification, and to be peculiarly adapted to the great confraternity of patriots which now engrosses so much of the history of passing events. There seems to be nothing sectional in it. It is national in the broadest sense of the term, and primative and forcible to intensity. In some annotations to the Annals of the Four Masters we find that the ancient Fenians were called by the Irish writers Fianna Eirionn signifying the Fenians of Ireland, and mentioned under the name of Fene, or Feine, which, according to Dr. O’Conor, signifies the Phenicians of Ireland, as Feine, according to Dr. O’Brien, in his dictionary, at the word Fearmiugh, signifies Phenicians; as they were probably called so from the tradition that Phenicians came to Ireland in the early ages. They are also called by the Irish writers Clann-Ua-Baois-gine, and so named, according to Keating and others, from Baoisgine, who was chief commander of these warriors, and ancestor of the famous hero Fionn, the son of Cumhall; but according to O’Conor, in his notes to the Four Masters, they were called Baoisgine, as being descended from the Milesians who came from Basconia, in Spain, now Biscay, in the country anciently called Cantabria. The Fenian warriors were a famous military force, forming the standing national militia, and instituted in Ireland in the early ages, long before the Christian era, but brought, to the greatest perfection in the reign of the celebrated Cormac, monarch of Ireland in the third century. None were admitted into this military body but select men of the greatest activity, strength, stature, perfect form, and valor, and, when the force was complete, it consisted of thirty-five Catha, that is, battalions or legions, each battalion containing three thousand men, according to O’Halloran and various other historians, making twenty-one thousand for each of the five provinces, or about one hundred thousand fighting men in time of war for the entire kingdom. The Ardrigh, or head king of Ireland, had, for the time being, chief control over these forces, but they often resisted his authority. A commander was appointed over every thousand of these troops, and the entire force was completely armed and admirably disciplined, and each battalion had their own bands of musicians and bards to animate them in battle, and celebrate their feats of arms. In the reign of the monarch Cormac, the celebrated Fionn MacCumhaill, who was descended from the Heremonian kings of Leinster, was the chief commander of the Fenian warriors, and his great actions, strength and valor are celebrated in the Ossianic poems, and various other productions of the ancient bards; he is called Fingal in MacPherson’s Poems of Ossian; but it is to be observed that these are not the real poems of Ossian, but mostly fictions fabricated by Mac Pherson himself, and containing some passages from the ancient poems. Fionn had his chief residence and fortress at Almhuim, now either the hill of Allen, near Kildare, or Ailinn, near old Kilcullen, where a great rath still remains, which was a residence of the ancient kings of Leinster. The Fenians were the chief troops of Leinster, and were Milesians of the race of Heremon; and their renowned commander Fionn, according to the Four Masters, was slain by the cast of a javelin, or, according to others, by the shot of an arrow, at a place called Ath Brea, on the river Boyne, A.D. 283, the year before the battle of Gaura, by the Lugnians of Tara, a tribe who possessed the territory now called the barony of Lune, near Tara, in Meath; and the place mentioned as Ath Brea, or the Ford of Brea, was situated somewhere on the Boyne, between Trim and Navan.

In the reign of king Cairbre Liffeachair, son of the monarch Cormac, the Fenian forces revolted from the service of Cairbre, and joined the famous Mogh Corb, King of Munster, of the race of the Dalcassians. After the death of Fionn Mac Cumhaill, the Fenians were commanded by his son Oisin or Ossian, the celebrated warrior and bard; and at the time of the battle of Gaura, Osgar, another famous champion, the son of Oisin, commanded the Fenian forces. The army of Munster, commanded by Mogh Corb, a name which signifies the Chief of the Chariot, and by his son Fear Corb, that is, the man or warrior of the chariot, was composed of the Clanna Deagha and Dalcassian troops, joined by the Fenians and their Leinster forces; and it is stated in the Ossianic poems, and in Hanmer’s Chronicle, from the Book of Howth, that a great body of warriors from North Britain. Denmark and Norway, came over and fought on the side of the Fenians at Gaura. The army of the monarch Cairbre was composed of the men of Heath and Ulster, together with the Clanna Morna, or Connaught warriors, commanded by Aodh or Hugh, King of Connaught, son of Garadh, grandson of Moraa of the Damnonian race. The Munster forces, and Fenians, marched to Meath, where they were met by the combined troops of the monarch Cairbre, and fought one of the most furious battles recorded in Irish history, which continued throughout the whole length of a summer’s day. The greatest valor was displayed by the warriors on each side, and it is difficult to say which army were victors or vanquished. The heroic Osgar was slain in single combat by the valiant monarch Cairbre, but Cairbre himself soon afterwards fell by the hand of the champion Simon, the son of Ceirb, of the race of the Fotharts of Leinster. Both armies amounted to about fifty thousand men, the greatest part of whom were slain; of the Fenian forces, which consisted of twenty thousand men, it is stated that eighteen thousand fell, and on both sides, thirty thousand warriors were slain. In the following year, Hugh, king of Connaught, according to O’Flaherty’s Ogygia, defeated the Munsters forces in battle at Spaltrach, near the mountain Senchua, in Muscry, in which he slew Mogh Corb, king of Munster. The tremendous battle of Gaura is considered to have led to the subsequent fall of the Irish monarchy, for after the destruction of the Fenian forces, the Irish kings never were able to muster a national army equal in valor and discipline to those heroes, either to cope with foreign foes, or to reduce to subjection the rebellious provincial kings and princes; hence the monarchy became weak and disorganized, and the ruling powers were unable to maintain their authority or make a sufficient stand against the Danish and Anglo-Norman Invaders of after time.

From what is here stated, it must be obvious, that no more appropriate name than that of “Fenian” could be given to the organization which now holds the destiny of Ireland in its hands, and which has ramified itself throughout almost every portion of the habitable globe.

We have already observed that the selection of this name was judicious in more than one relation. In the first place, it was far removed from that of any of the well known cognomens which had characterized so many of the noted revolutionary associations that had already failed in Ireland, and, in this respect, was strong; being free from any unpleasant reminiscences; while, from the fact of its import not being generally known to the masses, it stimulated enquiry on the part of the curious or weak nationalists which resulted in the most salutary consequences. The rarity of the name led to newspaper expositions of it, and moved the inquiring patriot to look into Irish history in relation to it; and in this manner a knowledge of much of the ancient greatness of Ireland became the common property of those who were formerly but slightly acquainted with such lore. The result was, thousands of the Irish became interested in relation to the past of their race; for, in connection with this name there was that which was calculated to arouse the spirit of patriotism within them and lead them on to a further perusal of the annals of their country.

It is evident, then, that no common appelation could have been fraught with such beneficial results; as there would have been nothing connected with it to stimulate enquiry or research. Repealers, Irish National Leagues, Whiteboys, Rockites, United Irishmen, &c., all had their day, and carried their meaning upon the surface; so that it was really necessary to give the new organization some occult, comprehensive and characteristic name, that would separate it in this aspect from all the Irish revolutionary bodies that had preceded it, and place it en rapport with the great past of the nation which was the grand receptacle of its traditions and source of its pride. Here, then, we leave this part of the subject, without presuming that we have thrown much more light upon the matter than has already been recognized by those who have at all looked into it; for it must, we think, be obvious to most Irish nationalists, that the energies and sentiments of their patriotic countrymen, could never have been grouped so successfully under any of the appelations just named, as they have been under that of “Fenians”—given, as we have already perceived, to the great national army of Ireland during the days of her early glory and power, and which alone represented the nation as a whole.

It is not our province to dwell here upon the infancy of the Brotherhood on either side of the Atlantic, or to enter into the various difficulties and unpleasant circumstances to which it has been subjected by alleged want of true patriotism and economy on the part of some of its founders. Sufficient to say, that through all such alleged obstructions it has struggled into the greatest and most powerful organization that has ever existed in any age of the world, and is, to-day, the mightiest and most invincible floating power that has ever influenced the destinies of any people. Its friends are numbered by millions and its members by hundreds upon hundreds of thousand. To its ranks belong soldiers, statesmen and orators, men of large pecuniary means and cultivated minds; cool heads and strong arms, and many guiding spirits who need but little light save that which shines within them. In addition, the sympathies of America and of every generous nation on the face of the earth, are with it; so that it has triumphed in advance, in a measure; for, backed by such influences, and actuated, as it is, by impulses so pure and holy, not a solitary doubt can obtain in relation to its ultimate success. True, that there are those who are thoughtless or traitorous enough to designate it as antagonistic to religion, and subversive, of the established order of things; but these, for the most part, are persons who reason through their pockets or their prejudices, and who are devoid of any thorough recognition of those great principles which are applicable to nations as well as to individuals and which are based upon the just doctrine, that resistence to tyrants is obedience to God—persons who are so methodical and patient under the sufferings of others, that they would pause to measure the precise length of rope that, was necessary to reach a drowning man. In the day of Ireland’s triumph, such people, will cone to confusion; as will those who have withheld from her, in the period of her sore travail, the pecuniary aid; which they could have well afforded out of their ample means, with a view to relieving their kinsmen and suffering fellow countrymen from the grasp of a tyrant the most inexorable that ever drew breath.

Were the Fenian organization confined entirely to Ireland, and did no active outside sympathy obtain for that unfortunate country the day of her redemption might be postponed to an indefinite period. So completely are all the resources and defences of the land in the hands of the English, that it would be difficult for the natives to make any lengthened or effective stand against the usurper. England has her, navy and her army to operate against any rising of the inhabitants, at a moment’s warning; while every office in the kingdom, of the slightest importance or trust, is in the hands of her minions. Again, among some of the recreant sons of the soil, she has, alas too ample scope for the use of her accursed gold; and thus it is; that to cope singled handed with her against such fearful odds, would involve oceans of blood, both on the field and on the scaffold. When, however, we come to dwell on the fact, that outside and beyond her control or reach, another body of Irish, which has been aptly termed a nation within a nation—when it comes to be understood, we say, that on the shores of free America a mighty and invincible Brotherhood has been built up, actuated by every sentiment of hostility which fires the breast of the most implacable of her enemies to-day, and that has for its aim and end an object in common with the people of Ireland at her own doors, then we begin to perceive how harrassed and powerless she must be. Neither her famine, fire nor sword, can avail her here. Secure beneath the ample folds of the glorious stars and stripes of the great Republic of America, and fired with the love of free institutions, and taught in the great principles of freedom by the liberty loving American people, this mighty band of exiles, in connection with their children born beneath the folds of the American flag, are steadily preparing to join fierce issue with her and test, upon the open field, the prowess she has so often set forth as superior to that of any other nation. This is what now disables and paralyses her. Ireland is, for the time being, beneath her heel; but what of the warlike hosts that loom in the western horizon and may soon rush down on her like a wolf on the fold, and wedge her in between two hostile walls? This is the great strength, of Ireland at the present moment. Her energies are not walled in by the ocean or a British fleet She is alive and active in other lands, and so powerful outside her own borders, that there is no such thing as circumscribing her influence or operations in so far as they relate to her struggles for independence. It is, then, from America that she is to obtain her most effective aid; and such being the case, it behooves the Irish nationalists on American soil to be true and steady to the great purpose in which they are now so ardently engaged; for so far, fortune has smiled upon them. The American people sympathize with them and feel that while they are aiding them to regain the long lost freedom of their country, they are bringing to the dust the very self-same enemy that sought, by stealth and the most cowardly means, to overthrow their own Commonwealth, and leave the Union a hopeless ruin before the world. It is this which now hangs a millstone about the neck of the British government, and which must ultimately develope itself in active sympathy with any people who have for their object the humiliation of the skull and cross-bones of St. George, on this side of the Atlantic at least.

And so the ball rolls; hourly accumulating force and magnitude, and destined, at no distant day, to sweep in upon Ireland and hurl the invader from her shores. No power on earth can stay its onward course. The freedom of Ireland is the creed of millions. The young lisp it; strong men repeat it in every clime; and the old of both hemispheres murmur it in their prayers. In short, it has taken a hold of the Irish heart wherever a true pulse warms it to-day, and has so incorporated itself with the hopes and aspirations of the Irish of all lands, that fate itself must yield to its power and universality. Within the last few years it has become part and parcel of the education of the Irish people wherever they are found; whether beneath the burning zone, in temperate latitudes or at the frozen poles; so that its ultimate success is beyond any possible contingency; from the fact that there never was a sentiment so widely spread and so religiously cultivated and cherished, that failed to accomplish all that it would attain.

CHAPTER VII.

While the children of Ireland were engaged in defending the flag of the Union during the late civil war, and sealing with their blood their fidelity to the great Republic, they were, also, acquiring a knowledge of arms and a warlike hardihood, which tended, on the cessation of hostilities, to render the Fenian organization more formidable than it could possibly have become, had peace pervaded the land from the inception of the Brotherhood to its triumph at Ridgeway. All through this gigantic struggle the hand of the Irish patriot and exile was prominently observable. Not a field had been fought from the firing of the first gun at Fort Sumter to the surrender of Lee’s army, on which their blood had not flowed in rivers. Look at Murfreesboro, Corinth, Perrysville, Iuka, Antietam, Chickahomany, Winchester, Fort Donaldson, Island Ten, Shiloh, Lexington, Bull Run, Carnifex Ferry, the Rappahannock, the Mississippi, the Cumberland, the Potomac and Fredericksburg, “where one-half of Meagher’s Brigade are still encamped under the sod,” and we have evidence of the truth of this assertion, the most ample and complete. Amidst these scenes of terrific carnage, the warlike genius and matchless personal bravery of many a distinguished Irishman were eminently conspicuous; while the latent fires that had previously lain dormant in the breast of others, leaped forth into a glorious conflagration, that commanded the admiration of every true soldier and evoked the recognition of the Commonwealth at large. Amongst this latter class stood pre-eminently forward, the present President of the Fenian Brotherhood throughout the world—GENERAL JOHN O’NIELL, a brief sketch of whom we introduce here for obvious reasons, drawn from authentic records in our possession, as well as from the current newspaper literature of the day:

“To the Irish reader,” observes a contemporary, well informed upon this subject, “and especially to that portion of our people, who are conversant with the past history of their country, and feel a patriotic pride in its glorious records, as well as a fervent hope for their renewal in the future—there is no name fraught with memories more inspiring than that of O’Neill—the princely house of Ulster, the champions of the Red Hand, who, for centuries, in the struggles of the nation against the Saxon invader, led the hosts of their people to victory, and only succumbed at last when poison and treachery, and chicane had accomplished what force failed to effect; for their valor was powerless against the dagger of the assassin, as were their honesty and open-heartedness against the bad faith of England’s perjured tools. Like many a noble and ancient Irish house, its scions are to-day to be found scattered through the world, in every walk of life. But though its banner no longer floats over embattled hosts, there is magic still in its associations; and when men speak of the O’Neill, the Irish heart leaps fondly towards the historic name and the proud recollection of the days when Hugh and Owen stood for the rights of their people and native land, and dealt the assailants of both those sturdy blows which so well justified their claim to the blazon of the ‘Red Hand.’

“In our own day, too, the old blood has vindicated its inherent force and purity, and has found a worthy representative in the subject of our present sketch—GENERAL JOHN O’NEILL,—whose name, in the future history of the Irish race, will be as inseparably linked with the struggles of the present generation for national independence, as are those of his ancestors with the efforts made by our people in the past against English tyranny and usurpation. As this noble and patriotic Irishman is now occupying so much of the public attention, and his political conduct meeting with that cordial endorsement which is a just tribute to his bravery and patriotism—whether on the bloody fields of the South, routing a Morgan, or assuming the command of his colonel, or, with thirty men repelling the attack of a regiment; or, with his gallant band of Irish soldiers, chasing the ‘Queen’s Own’ at Ridgeway—a brief review of his career will not be devoid of interest to all who desire to preserve a record of those who have deserved well of their country. Within the limits of such a sketch it would be impossible to do adequate justice to the character of a man like General O’Neill, and we can only assume to glance at the many attestations of his bravery and gentlemanly bearing which should have a public record, as they are from men of high position, and are of importance in illustrating the estimation in which he has always been held by his superior and brother officers. No man can produce a more unsullied one, or one better calculated to confirm his title to the high position in which his countrymen have placed him.

“General O’Neill was born on the 8th of March, 1834, in the townland of Drumgallon, parish of Clontibret, county Monaghan, Ireland. At his birth he was an orphan, his father having died a few weeks previously. The early part of his existence was spent with his grandparents in his native place. Bred up in a country, every hill and river and plain of which was linked in story with the deeds of the mighty men of old, it is not to be wondered at that the mind of young O’Neill seized with avidity every incident of the past connected with the condition and history of his fatherland, or that the bias of his future life was given by his meditations as he rambled along the slopes of Benburb, or traced the victorious steps of his ancient sept, through the classic region where his schoolboy days were passed. That it should be so is only natural; for he is a kinsman, as well as namesake, of the great Hugh O’Neill who, with his fearless followers, swept over Ulster and defeated so many of England’s greatest generals, and brought the heads of some of her pets to the block. And there is no doubt but that some of her favorites of to-day shall be made to bite the dust ere the General has done with them.

“General O’Neill is a man of calm temperament, but a firm will, which, when excited, however, is stern and inflexible; uniting with this a good education and gentlemanly address, with a mind bold, independent and decisive. His person partakes of the character of his mind for if the one never succumbed in the council, the other never bent in the field. Few could imagine from his modest exterior the latent, fire and energy which burn in his bosom. His manner is as unassuming as his mind is noble; quiet, yet impervious to flattery or laudations, he seems at the same time to pay due regard to popular opinion, without in the least permitting it to influence him in the discharge of his duties.

“While he was yet quite young, the family of General O’Neill emigrated to the United States, and his mother settled at Elizabeth, N.J., where she still resides. He did not follow them until 1848, when he was fourteen years of age. Having devoted some time to the completion of his studies here, he determined to engage in commercial pursuits, and for some time travelled as agent for some of the leading Catholic publishing houses. In 1855 he opened a Catholic Book Store in Richmond, Va., and while residing there became a member of the ‘Emmet Guard,’ then the leading Irish organization in that section of the country. The inclination thus manifested for the military profession soon proved to be the ruling passion in the mind of the young Celt,—checked only by the repugnance of his family towards the soldier’s life; for, in 1857, he gave up his business and entered the Second Regiment of U.S. Cavalry—a regiment which has since furnished the most distinguished officers who have figured on both sides during the late war.

“In the Regular Army, O’Neill rose steadily by his good character, bravery and aptitude, no less than by his education and invariable gentlemanly conduct. But though he has since filled positions of high responsibility, he has often declared that one of the most pleasurable emotions of his life was experienced when, for some meritorious act, he received, from his commanding officer, his warrant of Corporal.

“At the outbreak of the war, the regiment with which he was serving was recalled from California, and on the organization of the army under McClellan, was attached to the Regular Cavalry Division, which took part in the principal battles in the campaign of the Peninsula, during which O’Neill was in command of Gen. Stoneman’s body guard. After the withdrawal of the army from the Peninsula, he was dispatched to Indiana, where he was retained for some time as instructor of cavalry, drilling the officers of the force then being raised for the defence of that portion of the Union against the incursions of the Confederate guerillas. He subsequently entered the 5th Indiana Cavalry as Second Lieutenant, and served with that regiment, during 1863, in the operations against the Southern leaders in Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana and Ohio. In these expeditions, which, whether in the nature of scouts, reconnoisances or advances, generally took the shape of sharp running fights, Lieut. O’Neill’s skill and daring not only attracted the attention of his commanding officers, but further enlisted the enthusiasm of the men, insomuch that, when one of those sorties was ordered, the first question asked was always—‘Is O’Neill to lead it?’—and if the answer was in the affirmative, no matter how jaded the men might be, volunteers in any number were ready at once.

“There is no greater instance of personal bravery, or gallantry equal to any emergency, than that related by Archbishop Purcell, of Cincinnati, in his account of O’Neill’s encounter with Morgan, the famous guerilla; and as many of our readers have not read the partial account given in Mr. Savage’s ‘Fenian Heroes and Martyrs,’ it may prove of interest to them, as his encounter with Morgan is more generally spoken of than understood. Archbishop Purcell says:—

‘There is a remarkably brave officer suffering from diarrhoea, contracted in a three month’s chase after Morgan, now in St. John’s Hospital, in this city—Lieut. O’Neill, of the 5th Indiana Cavalry. His mother resides in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Her adventurous boy enlisted in the regular army at the time of the Mormon excitement in Utah; was afterwards sent to California; was made Sergeant for distinguished services on the Potomac; employed on a recruiting tour in Indiana, and promoted to a Lieutenancy in the famous 5th Indiana cavalry.

‘Respecting his encounter with Hamilton’s rebel force, in May, the Indianapolis papers spoke of the exploit of Lieut. O’Neill, and a detachment of his company, as one of the most daring and brilliant achievements of the war. The Lieutenant has kindly furnished us with the following interesting account of the part he took in the defeat of Morgan. The authorities here have recommended him for promotion to the rank of Major.

‘INCIDENTS OF THE FIGHT WITH MORGAN, AT BUFFINGTON’S ISLAND, ON THE 20TH OF JULY.

‘On the night of the 19th, about 10 o’clock, Gen. Judah, with his cavalry and artillery command, left Pomeroy for Buffington. The General sent First Lieutenant John O’Neill, of the 5th Indiana cavalry, with fifty men, ahead, with instructions to try and open communications with the militia, said to be in close proximity to the island. The Lieutenant was delayed by losing the road during the night, and did not arrive till about an hour and a half after daylight. He then learned that the militia had been skirmishing with the enemy during the night, and that Gen. Judah’s advance had been ambushed, the morning being foggy; and the General’s Assistant Adjutant General, Capt. Rice, with some twenty-five or thirty men and a piece of artillery, and Chief of Artillery, Capt. Henshaw, had been captured and sent to Gen. Morgan’s headquarters on the river road, some thirty miles ahead of him, on the enemy’s left flank. The Lieutenant at once resolved to recapture what had been taken; and, with his Spartan band, kept steadily on. Several parties tried to stop him; but a volley from the “Sharp’s” carbines of his boys invariably drove them back. At length he came on Morgan, with two regiments and a body guard of one hundred men. The Lieutenant halted his men suddenly, at an angle of the road, within one hundred and fifty paces. He gave the command “ready,” and intended to have given them a volley; but seeing some of his own men in front, he did not fire, but commanded “forward,” and dashed in amongst them. If he had fired, every shot must have told, he was so close. Morgan, with his two regiments and body guard, ran without firing a shot. All our prisoners were released, and about thirty of the enemy taken. Some were killed and wounded. The Lieutenant pursued Morgan about two miles clear off the field, and captured three pieces of artillery, which he carried off with him. This was the last of Morgan on the field. The Lieutenant cannot tell how many he killed or wounded, as his fight was a running one, extending over four miles; but the surgeon in charge of burying the dead and looking after the wounded, reported that most of both were along the river where O’Neill had been.’

“The above, from Archbishop Purcell, is an unquestionable testimony of the daring and audacity of the subject of this sketch in the field. The National Journal, in giving an account of the same battle, says:

‘Lieutenant O’Neill, of the 5th Indiana Cavalry, now appeared by another road, with but fifty men, and charged two different regiments so desperately that they broke and left our captured guns, officers and men in our possession.’

“The Louisville Journal, after relating an instance of O’Neill’s personal bravery, says:

‘Lieutenant O’Neill is the same who, about two weeks ago, while out with Col. Graham, on the Tennessee side of Cumberland, with twenty men as an advanced guard, came up with Hamilton, having two hundred men drawn up in line—charged and ran him thirteen miles, and with his own hand, while ahead of his men, killed five—two of them with the sabre.’

“To go into detail, and give a minute account of the many instances of gallantry, pluck and determination displayed by the subject of our sketch, would be beyond the scope of our present purpose, as they, at the same time, would only tend to multiply instances, without lending any additional proof. But we cannot, as it directly bears on his letter of resignation, with accompanying letters of endorsement from distinguished Generals, pass over that singular and noble proof of unexampled bravery—his assuming the command of his Colonel Butler, when the latter showed signs of cowardice.

“The affair took place at Walker’s Ford, on Clinch River, in East Tennessee, where the division to which O’Neill’s regiment was attached was stationed, to dispute the passage of the Southern troops, which in large force occupied the adjacent country. O’Neill had only a few days before rejoined his command, after the illness incurred in his chase after Morgan, and was at breakfast when the alarm was given that the enemy had surprised the advanced guard, and were attacking in force. Springing on his horse, he rallied the company of picked men he commanded, and for a long time held the advancing forces of the enemy in check, to give time for others to form line of battle. But the enemy were rapidly getting in rear of the Union troops, and O’Neill fell back on the main body of his regiment, just in time to hear his Colonel cry out, ‘Oh, God! all is lost! save yourselves, men, the best way you can. Nothing is left us but retreat!’ ‘Not by a long sight!’ shouted O’Neill, as, sword in hand, he dashed in front of the mob of soldiers, upon whom panic and the example of their commander were rapidly doing the work of disorganization. ‘Men,’ continued he, turning to them, ‘all of you who mean to fight, fall in with me.’ The effect was almost miraculous. About one hundred and fifty of the fugitives rallied, and with these he drove back the advancing columns of the enemy, saved the day, and, though severely wounded in the action, remained master of the field.

“Of this attack, a correspondent of the Indianapolis Daily Journal, of January, 1864, says:

‘The rebels, finding we were retreating, determined to drive us into the river. About three hundred mounted men came over the hills, charging Company “A,” 65th Indiana, and three companies of the 5th, commanded by Col. Butler and Capt. Hodge. Our boys began to waver. The Colonel tried to rally them to no effect, when O’Neill rode up and took command. Taking a Henry rifle from one of the 65th boys, he commenced firing, at the same time yelling at the men to charge them, which they did. For about five minutes it was the most frightful scene I have ever witnessed. Out of the three hundred Confederates, only about twenty went back mounted, the balance being killed, wounded, and dismounted. A rebel officer, afterwards taken, admitted the loss of twenty killed and forty wounded in the charge. This so effectually checked them, and convinced them that a charge would not pay, that we very easily held our ground until the wagons and guns had crossed the river. But our brave Lieutenant, O’Neill, received a wound in the thigh while we were making our last stand. He rode out all day, never seeking shelter, cheering his men. When other officers had given up all as lost, he replied, “Not by a long sight.” He met with a hearty response from the men. We afterwards learned that we were fighting three brigades, among them the “Texan Rangers.”’

“There is no nobler instance of daring or pluck, or of presence of mind, or decisiveness of character, equal to any crisis, than this. But what is the sequel? The Colonel, narrow minded as he was cowardly, was piqued at young O’Neill’s gallantry in repelling the attack, which at once stamped himself with cowardice, and lowered him, as a consequence, in the estimation of his brother officers. After the battle he sent a report of the officers and non-commissioned officers whom he recommended for promotion, omitting the name of O’Neill. This was a direct insult to the man who displayed the most bravery, and had saved them from a watery grave, a fiery death, or, worse than all, an ignominious surrender. It at once aroused all that was stern in his nature—to have such a coward offer him an insult. He went to the Colonel, and demanded if it was true that he had sent the names of certain officers to the Governor for promotion, and noncommissioned officers for commissions over him, and omitted his name altogether. The Colonel replied in the affirmative. ‘Then,’ said O’Neill, ‘I shall never serve another day in your regiment.’

“We give these particulars in detail, as well as his resignation, not only on account of its boldness, but as some people try to put a different construction on the fact of his sending in his resignation at that time. Conformably with his determination, he went to his quarters, where, after a fortnight, he prepared his resignation, and sent it to headquarters. In the interim, the Colonel sent one day to know if he would drill the regiment. O’Neill sent back to know if it was an order or a request; on being assured it was the latter, he complied. He was expecting to be arrested every day; but the Colonel was too much of a coward, as he was afraid the consequences would be rather unpleasant. After a few weeks, his resignation was sent to headquarters, with letters of disapproval—but endorsing his complaints, and testifying to his bravery and efficiency—from Gens. Sturges and Stoneman. Comments on these letters would be superfluous, as they speak forcibly for themselves.

“CAMP NEAR PARIS, KENTUCKY, April 7th, 1864.
“Sir: I have the honor herewith to tender my resignation as First
Lieutenant of Company ‘I,’ 5th Cavalry, 90th Regiment Indiana
Volunteers, on account of promotions in the regiment, which have
placed men over me whom I cannot consistently serve under. Some of
them, Captains, have been Sergeants in the same regiment since I
have been First Lieutenant; and while I have a high regard for these
officers personally, I can never allow myself to be commanded by
them in the field.
“I served in the regular army nearly four years, in Utah,
California, and on the Peninsula: as private, Corporal, Sergeant,
and acting-Sergeant-Major, and have been in the regiment, as
Lieutenant, sixteen months.
“The enclosed copies of letters from Generals Hodson, Judah and
Stoneman, with others from the present Colonel of my regiment, and
the former, Colonel Graham, recommending me to Governor Morton, for
the position of field-officer in one of the regiments being
organized in Indiana, will show that I am not undeserving of
promotion in my own regiment, and that I have some cause to be
dissatisfied with not receiving it, and with having officers placed
over me whom, in point of military knowledge and experience, I
cannot regard as my superiors.
“I certify, on honor, that I am not indebted to the United States
on any account whatever, and that I am not responsible for any
government property, except what I am prepared to turn over to the
proper officer on the acceptance of my resignation, and that I was
last paid by Major Haggerty to include the twenty-ninth of February,
1864.
“Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
“JOHN O’NEILL, First Lieut., Co. ‘I,’ 5th Ind. Cav.

“Rather a bold epistle this! He tells his commander squarely he will not serve under officers whom he considers his inferiors in military knowledge. We shall now give the accompanying letters to which he refers, from Generals Sturges, Judah and Stoneman, which furnish unquestionable proof of his ability and military capacity. These letters, from men of fine military experience, are very high references of O’Neill’s ability. The following is that from Major-General Stoneman:—

“HEADQUARTERS 23D ARMY CORPS, March 8th, 1864.
“I knew Lieut. O’Neill well on the Peninsula, and as a brave and
worthy officer, in whose judgment and capacity I had the greatest
confidence. I hope he will receive the promotion to which his merits
entitle him, that of a field-officer in a colored regiment.
“GEORGE STONEMAN, Major-Gen., Com’g. Corps.

“That from General Judah is equally as commendatory. If the one refers to his bravery on the Peninsula, the other testifies equally to his daring during the war:—

“HEADQUARTERS SECOND DIVISION, 23D ARMY CORPS,
In camp near Mossy Creek, Tenn., March 7th, 1864.
“It gives me pleasure to state that, from personal observation, I
deem Lieut. John O’Neill, of the 5th Indiana Cavalry, one of the most
gallant and efficient officers it has been my duty to command.
His daring and services have been conspicuous, and I trust he may
receive what he has so ably merited—his promotion.
“H.M. JUDAH, Brig.-Gen., Com’g. Division.

“The following endorsement, written on the resignation by General Sturges, when forwarded to the headquarters, shows that if merit, military and personal, could meet with its reward, Lieut. O’Neill should get speedy promotion:—

“HEADQUARTERS CAVALRY CORPS,
PARIS, KY., April 7th, 1864.
“Disapproved and respectfully forwarded.
“This is an excellent officer—too valuable, indeed, to be lost to
the service. He was severely wounded near Tazewell, under Colonel
Graham, last December, and is estimated as one of the best officers
of my command. This is not the only resignation which has been
offered on account of the promotions of inferiors having been made
in the 5th Indiana Cavalry over the heads of superiors, based upon
political or other considerations, and altogether regardless of
merit. By this system junior and meritorious officers find
themselves cut off from all hope of advancement, and compelled to
serve subordinate to others for whose qualifications they can
entertain no respect.
“While, therefore, I disapprove his resignation for the public
good, I would respectfully urge that some policy be initiated
or recommended by which officers can see the way open for their
advancement according to merit.
“Respectfully,
“L.D. STURGES, Brig.-Gen. Com’g.

“The following was the reply from Headquarters:—

“HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE OHIO,
KNOXVILLE, TENN., April 16, 1864
“Respectfully returned from this Headquarters, Cavalry Corps, to
Lieut. John O’Neill, 5th Indiana Cavalry.
“There appears to be no remedy for the evil referred to by General
Sturges.
“By command of
“MAJOR GEN. SCHOFIELD.
“R. MOORE, Ass’t. Adj’t. Gen.

“Such attestations of the bravery, military skill and high moral character of General O’Neill, coming from his companions in arms, from the public press, and from Generals of experience and high position, form a record of which any man might be proud. Comment on them is unnecessary, as they speak forcibly for themselves. Of his noble spirit, decisiveness in the hour of danger, ability, pure character, and gentlemanly bearing, we have produced overwhelming testimony; but as he is now before the public in so very prominent a manner, it is necessary that the people should know minutely his every act and the nature of the man under whose leadership the Irish Nationalists in America are about to renew the good old fight for loved Erin’s disenthralment. No matter whether on the field or in the drawing-room, his calmness of deportment and gentlemanly bearing are the same. The simplest child he would no more offend than the most powerful man. Uniting with such gentleness and heroic bravery, precise military knowledge, and a pure patriotism, may not Irishmen hope that in him they have found the man who is destined to lead them on to victory and liberty. In whatever sphere he moves, he is universally endeared to all; for

‘In him is the heart of a woman, combined
With a heroic life and a governing mind.’

“In the movement on Canada, in 1866, Gen. O’Neill sacrificed a business which, in a few years, would have made him a wealthy man. But he did so without hesitation; for he loved his country, and had pledged his life to her service. With the contingent raised by him in Tennessee, he proceeded to Buffalo, where, finding himself the senior officer, he assumed command of the troops there assembled, and, in obedience to the orders he had received, crossed the Niagara river, at the head of six hundred men, on the night of the 31st of May, and raised the Green Flag once more on the soil of the enemy. On the following evening, receiving information that the British forces were marching against him to the number of five thousand, in two distinct columns, he resolved to fight them in detail, and by a rapid march got between them. On the morning of the 2d of June, at Ridgeway, he struck them under Booker; and, though the enemy out-numbered his force four to one, routed them signally. Falling back on his original position at Fort Erie, he there learned that the United States Government had stopped the movement at other points, and arrested its leaders. Under the circumstances, nothing more could be done, at that time; and he was reluctantly obliged to re-cross the Niagara, and surrender to the United States forces. That he only did so under the pressure of necessity, is attested by his offer to the Committee in Buffalo to hold his ground, as his own report of the battle of Ridgeway attests, in which he simply says:

‘But if a movement was going on elsewhere, I was perfectly willing to make the Old Fort a slaughter pen, which I knew it would be the next day if I remained; for I would never have surrendered!’

“At the Cleveland Convention of the Fenian Brotherhood, in September, 1867, General O’Neill was elected a Senator of that body; and having been chosen Vice President on the resignation of that office by James Gibbons, Esq., he succeeded President W.R. Roberts, on the resignation of that gentleman, Dec. 31, 1867.

“We have thus briefly sketched the principal incidents of General O’Neill’s career, and, in conclusion, may venture to say that a more stainless, or meritorious, could scarcely be presented to the public. His whole history incontrovertibly illustrates as noble, determined and daring a character as ever led a brave but enslaved people to victory.

“We could supplement this with various other official documents and accounts, serving, if such were possible, to illustrate still further the proud daring and exalted spirit of this worthy son of an illustrious past; but shall, at this particular point of our story, content ourselves with what has just been said. We might, were we so inclined, introduce, also, various other Irish names that shone forth with unrivalled splendor during the late war, and point to the thousands upon thousands of Irish rank and file that, on numerous fields, piled up ramparts of dead around the glorious flag of the Union; but such would not serve our purpose here, as we are restricted in relation to the task before us; and as the fact of the exploits and the bravery of hosts of our loyal countrymen are known to the government and people of this Republic. Sufficient to say, however, that amongst all those of our race who fought and bled in defence of the North, and the integrity of the Commonwealth, there was not to be found one individual who evinced more profound judgment than he in handling the forces at his command, or more cool daring, or instances of personal bravery, as well as that tremendous and overwhelming dash, which gained for Ney the proud appellation, ‘the bravest of the brave?’ and placed the Marshals of France amongst the foremost in history.

“From out of this fierce civil contest, then, it is obvious from all that we have just said, that Fenianism, in its military aspect, received the largest and most important accessions. At the close of the conflict, thousands upon thousands of veterans joined its standard; and thus, in an incredibly short period, its warlike character became intensified, until, at last, the organization on the American continent loomed up before England with an aspect so threatening and a purpose so apparent, that she instantly set about putting her house in order, and began to glance in the direction of making some cunning, though paltry, concessions to Ireland.

“If, however, the military circles of the Brotherhood were distinguished by the accession of many brave and patriotic soldiers, at the juncture already referred to, the organization, in its civil aspect, was not less fortunate or noticeable. Led triumphantly through some of the most difficult phases of its existence, by such self-sacrificing and noble patriots as Colonel W.R. Roberts, of New York, its late President, and James Gibbons, Esq., of Philadelphia, its present Vice President—than whom two more disinterested and sterling Sons of the Sod do not exist—its basis enlarged and strengthened, we say, by such men as these, and the able and truehearted Senators that surrounded them, the Brotherhood, at the close of the war, was in a condition sufficiently exalted to attract to its centre many of the ablest soldiers who had fought on the side of the Union, and who, with their numerous and respective followings, were ready to evince their love of liberty and republican institutions further, by resuming their swords and striking home for the freedom of poor, down-trodden Ireland, against a tyrant the most infamous that has ever existed, and to whom America owes a debt of vengeance, that, under any circumstances, cannot fail to be one day repaid with tenfold interest.

“And so this grand confraternity of patriots prospered and became the greatest and most powerful that has ever appeared upon the theatre of human existence. To be sure, in a body so numerous and all but ramified throughout every portion of the habitable globe, there have been some unworthy members, who fell before the love of gain, or British gold; but, then, and with pride we say it, taking the gigantic proportions of the organization into consideration, and the temptations to sin which have been so constantly placed before it by that blood-thirsty assassin, England, it stands, by comparison, pre-eminently pure above any other similar revolutionary body that has ever obtained in either hemisphere, or in any age of the world. Up to the present hour, under the protection and guidance of a Divine providence, it has surmounted every difficulty that has beset it. It has outlived whatever of treason or mismanagement obtained in its own bosom; it has survived the cruel calumnies and falsehoods of a traitorous and subsidized press, and the machinations of that dangerous English element that sometimes steals into high places, and which has so often interfered with the true interests of America within her own borders, as well as touching her foreign relations. These and many either untoward influences it has surmounted; until, now, it stands upon a pedestal beyond the reach of danger; not only from its great inherent strength and virtue, but from its all but incomprehensible ubiquity, and positive existence in every land and clime. How futile, then, the efforts of its enemies to crush it either by ungenerous legislation, or through the propagation of falsehood. Fenianism is a power founded upon the immutable principles of truth and justice; and is, therefore, indestructible. Consequently, until it has achieved the grand and holy objects that it has set before it, it must win its way to triumph, step by step, if needs be no matter what the magnitude or the number of the difficulties that beset it.”

CHAPTER VIII.

Early as Barry was up on the morning following his introduction to the reader, he found Tom and Greaves in the bar-room, discussing one of O’Brien’s favorite decoctions, which was averred to possess the virtue of giving a “fillip” to the lagging appetite, and attuning it to the healthiest possible breakfast pitch. Nicholas, although not addicted to early potations, was prevailed upon to join the party. During, the friendly conversation which accompanied this faithless libation to the Goddess of Health, Greaves observed that while he did not feel himself at liberty to speak freely in the mixed company of the preceding evening, notwithstanding what might have been termed his unfriendly insinuations in relation to Ireland, he was himself a true friend of Irish freedom; and, on all befitting occasions, an humble champion of her total and unequivocal independence of England. Here he produced a letter, from a secret pocket in the lining of his vest, which he handed to Tom for hasty perusal; remarking, at the same time, that he well knew to whom he was submitting it. A hurried glance at the contents induced O’Brien to open his eyes wider than they had been opened for some time, and to regard his companion with an almost bewildered stare!

“Sure enough, it’s his handwritin, and it’s as thrue as the sun,” ejaculated Tom, as he folded up the letter and returned it to the owner, “and it’s a different opinion both Nick and myself had of you last night, although sorry I am for it now; and there’s my hand for you.”

“What’s up now?” retorted Barry, well knowing that O’Brien would never have offered his hand to Greaves, unless there were good reasons for it.

“Nothin’ more,” returned Tom, “beyond that we had formed a wrong opinion of our frind here, last night; for, instead of his bein’ what I was half inclined to take him for, he cannot fail to be other than the right stamp, or he never could have that letther in his pocket.”

“That’s enough for me, Tom,” replied Barry, extending his hand to Greaves, “for whoever you endorse is sure to pass muster, in this place, at least.”

The conversation here became low and confidential; being interrupted only by an occasional customer who dropped in to take his “morning;” until, at last, breakfast was announced, and the soldier and Greaves, taking the hint, were soon snugly seated side by side in the little parlor of the preceding night, at a neat and comfortable table, smoking with some of the good things which so constantly characterized The Harp. O’Brien, from his other avocations, was unable to join them at the moment; so they both conversed freely on the topic that had just commanded their attention in the bar, and which referred to neither more nor less than the intended invasion of Canada by the army of the Irish Republic, then said to be preparing for a descent upon the Provinces, in the neighboring Union. Nicholas was unable to give any definite information upon the matter; as the authorities of the organization in the United States were very reticent regarding it, and Greaves himself appeared but little better informed. Barry, however, expressed the opinion that, if any man in Canada had thorough information on the point, it was Tom; although he himself had no very tangible grounds for making the observation, notwithstanding the strength of his surmises.

“Do you not belong to the organization yourself, and if you do, ought you not to be in possession of some facts on this all-important movement?” rejoined Greaves, “and if you are not a member, surely you are sufficiently true to Ireland to have been informed, to some extent at least, in regard to it, by your friend O’Brien, who is, I learn, a Centre here.”

“Well, strange as it may appear,” returned the other, “I don’t belong to the Brotherhood, not having, yet had an opportunity to join it; and as for Tom, whatever my suspicions may be, I really am unable to say positively that he is in any degree connected with the organization; although I am sensible that his sympathies, like my own, lie in that direction.”

“How is your regiment situated on this point,” remarked Greaves, leisurely breaking an egg and commencing to chip the shell.

“A good many of my way of thinking,” replied the other; “but, as you know, it is necessary to be cautious, as not only is the commanding officer a tartar, but most of the swords and sashes are of the same kidney. The fact of the case is, however, several of our fellows have deserted, and no doubt will join the organization in the States, and render good service to the cause there, in a military point of view.”

“Why don’t you follow their example and do something for your poor, down-trodden country,” said Philip in reply, “seeing that now is the time she needs the service of all her children?”

“There is no necessity for my deserting,” rejoined Barry, “for I have already applied for my discharge, which I expect to receive this very day; so that ere the sun sets, in all probability, I shall be a freeman.”

Greaves became silent here for a few moments, as if revolving something in his mind, when, lifting his head again, he resumed the conversation by asking:

“Are strangers permitted to visit the Fort? If so, I should be very glad to take a peep at it this morning, as I shall have a few boars to spare before I can do any business, or rather before the parties I have come to see will be prepared to meet me.”

“Why, not as a general thing, just now,” returned Nicholas, “but I think you may be able to gain admittance if you are accompanied by me, who will, of course, vouch to the sentry for you.”

“Then if you allow me,” said Greaves, “I shall avail myself of your kind invitation, and cross the bridge with you after we have breakfasted, for I can well imagine that during a period when such rumors are afloat, the Commandant as rather chary of permitting strangers to enter his gates.”

In this strain the conversation flowed until breakfast was ended, when the friends proposed to sally forth from the Harp, and wend their way to the point already mentioned. As Barry was leaving the bar-room, however, Tom whispered something in his ear, which appeared to puzzle him for a moment, but returning a keen glance of recognition, both he and Greaves passed out into the cool, fresh morning-air, and began slowly wending their way to the Fort.

There being as yet no special order about the admission of strangers, Greaves, with Nicholas by his side, passed the sentry without question, and proceeded to the canteen, which, early as it was, showed some signs of life. Here Barry introduced his new acquaintance to many of his comrades; but in such common place terms, as to attract no attention whatever on the part of any person. Being for parade, however, he was obliged to leave his friend in other keeping, for a short period, and so hastened to the barrack-room to prepare himself for his morning duties. During the interval of his absence, Greaves stepped out of the canteen, alone, and learning that the Colonel was speaking to some of the officers near the parade ground, made his way towards where the group was standing, and crossing the path of the Colonel as he was walking towards his quarters, accosted him in a manner which soon arrested the progress and attention of that officer, and brought him to a dead halt. The conversation was brief and rapid, while a slip of paper thrust into the hands of the Colonel, by Greaves, seemed to place both on a strange footing of recognition. So brief was the interview, that it was not observed by any individual in the garrison; and so quickly did Greaves return to the canteen, that his absence was scarcely noticed. Here Barry found him as he had left him, making himself agreeable to the soldiers; being more than liberal in paying for all they drank. As the bugle sounded for parade, he bid our young hero “good bye for the present,” and leaving the Fort, proceeded to retrace his steps towards the town, or city, as it may be called.

When he arrived here, instead of returning to The Harp, he bent his steps in another direction, and entered a hotel that was in every relation the very antipodes of the establishment in which he had passed the night. Here, in every direction, were to be found the traces of an English spirit and blind adhesion to wretched and exploded traditions. In the office hung the portrait of the cruel Queen of England, and that of her defunct consort, whose injustice and pedantry were so snubbed by the illustrious Humboldt. Here, too, were to be seen the likeness of the—iron-hearted, it should have been—Duke, presenting a birth-day present, or something of the sort, to a moonfaced yonker that sat fair and plump upon the knee of its royal mother. In another corner was to be found a representation of the Prince of Wales, for whose head and face the engraver had done infinitely more than nature; while directly opposite stood, in a dark, heavy frame, the one-armed hero of the Nile, who owed so much of his fame to poor Emma Harte—the unfortunate Lady Hamilton, who, after having conferred the most serious benefits upon England, was permitted to starve, with her daughter, in a garret somewhere in or near Calais; while some of the spurious offspring of orange and ballet girls filled many of the highest offices in the land she had so often served.

In this establishment the subject of Fenianism was discussed as a leading topic, in a manner quite different from the style in which it was treated at the Harp. Here no voice was raised in its favor—no word of justification advanced in its behalf. Still, although its importance was ignored ostensibly, there were a nervousness and misgiving about some of those who conversed upon it, which showed that they were ill at ease. There seemed, in addition, to be some vague sense of insecurity preying upon them, which could only have originated in their want of confidence in themselves, or in some person or persons to whom were entrusted the gravest interests of the Province. This was the more obvious, from the fact, that, from time to time, mysterious and half-whispered enquiries were made, in reference to one particular individual, whose state of health or mind seemed at the moment to engross no ordinary share of the attention of the numerous guests that filled the bar or office, for the apartment was used as both.

Greaves listened with open ears to all that transpired, and, after inspecting the hotel register, took up a morning paper and seated himself in an arm-chair at his side. While engaged, as he feigned to be, in perusing the news, although actually endeavoring to catch every whisper that floated around him, he gathered, that, for the week or ten days proceeding, one of the most important functionaries in the Province, who, although a clever man, was sorely addicted to fits of intemperence, was now, while the country was convulsed with gloomy forebodings, regarding Fenianism, again passing through one of his prolonged and fearful drinking bouts, and totally unfit to pay even the slightest attention to the momentous business of his office. Already, it was averred, numerous dispatches, of the most vital moment, were lying unopened upon his table, where they were scattered, wet and stained with wine and debauch, some of them having, as it was urged, been obviously disfigured, in part, for the purpose, perhaps, of lighting cigars; while, pale, wretched and half insane, the miserable creature to whom they were addressed, reclined on a sofa by their side, jabbering to a few bloated boon companions, obscene jests and amusing anecdotes, through which the fire of his own native wit sometimes shot brilliantly, though but for a single moment. This, we say. Greaves gathered from the conversation around him, and as in one or two cases he perceived, on the part of the speakers, scarcely any desire to preserve a tone of secrecy on the subject, he felt pretty much assured, that the case was a bad one indeed, and that the individual who could so far forget his own interests for the sake of the bottle, and who could be tolerated in any position of high trust in the State, while addicted to vices of such a character, not to mention others, thought by the Hamilton Quarterly Review to be of a graver nature were that possible, must be sustained by the influence of persons terribly deluded, or creatures vile in their degree in turn, and who, like himself, were regardless of the trust reposed in them by the people. And yet, as Greaves afterwards learned, this same man came to Canada a poor, bare-footed, Scotch lad, with a father whose only fortune was an old fiddle, and that inexorable but praiseworthy characteristic of his country—a determination to collect the bawbees at whatever shrine first presented itself on the shores of the New World. Be this as it may, the daily press of the Province has since verified the correctness of the whispers heard by Greaves, and made public the accusation, that this individual, so recently distinguished by a mark of royal favor, for three weeks previous to the invasion of Canada, was so lost in a whirlpool of the most deplorable intemperance, as to be utterly incapable of opening or attending to the important dispatches which lay scattered and unheeded upon his bedroom table.

When Greaves returned to The Harp, he found O’Brien in a state of great excitement. A soldier, as it appeared, had just arrived from the Fort, with the information that the Colonel, on second consideration, did not find it justifiable to apply for Barry’s discharge, at a moment when the country was threatened with danger; and that, as the regiment should soon be ordered home, as he was assured, he had determined not to recommend any discharges until it had reached England. This intelligence had been conveyed to Nicholas by the Colonel in person, after parade, and in a manner which precluded the slightest hope of its being reversed by any succeeding alteration of opinion on the part of the individual who communicated it. A thunderbolt, had it fallen at the feet of the young soldier, could not have startled or paralyzed him more. He was actually struck dumb by it Here was the chalice dashed from his lips at last. He turned away in despair; but as he was for duty, he was constrained to smother the tumultuous feelings within his breast. When alone, however, and pacing his lonely round with his musket on his shoulder, he had time to measure, with sufficient calmness and accuracy, the length, breadth and depth of the great misfortunes that had befallen him. There was but one course left open to him. He had sought to purchase his discharge and leave the service, without the taint of desertion attaching to his name amongst any of his comrades, although he felt that he was not morally bound to remain in the service of England, for a single moment longer than it served his own private ends. Desertion, then, was the only course left open to him, and he was determined to follow it, upon the first fitting opportunity. Another reason why he would rather have been discharged in the ordinary manner from the service: if he once deserted he should never again, with any degree of security, visit any portion of the British dominions; and as Canada lay so close beside the United States, he would gladly have avoided the inconvenience of being shut out from it, as O’Brien and more than one of his friends resided there. However, there was now no help for it; to England he should never return, and so he disposed of the matter in his own bosom. When relieved of duty, then, and with his purpose fixed firmly in his heart, he once again visited The Harp, where he found Tom and Greaves lamenting over the intelligence of his misfortune, and to whom, in a moment of anxiety and excitement, he disclosed his determination to quit the service, and gain the shores of the neighboring Republic the first favorable moment that presented itself. Tom appeared somewhat agitated if not alarmed; at so serious a disclosure, made with such apparent unconcern; and it was only when Barry remembered the hint of the morning, which O’Brien gave him as he was about proceeding to the garrison, that he, himself, felt that he had perhaps been too incautious and precipitate before a person who, after all, was but a stranger to him, although apparently a kindly one. The cat being out of the bag, however, there was now no help for it; and as Greaves seemed to enter warmly into the project, and even offered to share his purse with Nicholas, if there was any necessity for it, the matter was allowed to rest as it was, and suspicion of Greaves, if any remained in the breast of either the soldier or Tom, was driven into the background, and constrained to remain in abeyance for the time being.

When Barry again returned to his quarters, he freely discussed his disappointment among his comrades, and declared his determination to lay the matter before the Commander-in-Chief, averring, with great earnestness, that he had always done his duty, and that he was not accountable for the state of the country, and should not be called upon to suffer for a condition of things outside and beyond his control, and which he was in no manner instrumental in bringing about. His argument seemed plausible enough, but then what, at any time, his argument, when it ran counter to the desires or intentions of his commanding officer? Therefore, the matter, after having been subjected to due discussion, was allowed to fall asleep in the usual stereotyped style; although as may be supposed, there were one or two breasts, at least, that were kept alive and active by it. Nicholas, believing that any intelligence of his embarrassment on the subject would but perplex and pain Kate, determined not to write to her regarding it, but to be the first to bear her the news himself. As already observed, she had written to him to procure his discharge at the earliest possible moment, and now to learn that his freedom was jeopardized for an indefinite period, involving, in addition, his return to England first, would be a renewal of her old agony. This he was determined to spare her; so, to those of his company in whom he could confide, and who were themselves ripe for any project that would tend to their total disseverment from the flag they so detested, he cautiously communicated his intentions, finding, in return, that more than one of them were on the eve of trying their fortune in the same manner. Soon, then, a sturdy little band had determined to leave the Fort, whatever night Barry should pitch upon; premising, of course, that it should be some one on which he would be on duty, and at a favorable point.

This much arranged, Greaves and Tom were made acquainted with the whole particulars of the plot; the former entering, to all appearance, heart and soul into it, and furthering it in every manner within the limits of his power. In fact, Greaves was actually behaving in a manner which staggered some suspicions still entertained by Tom, notwithstanding the letter to which reference has already been made, for he agreed to assist in forwarding the escape of one of Nicholas’ company that had deserted sometime previously, and was still concealed in the outskirts of the town, in a place known to Barry only, and where he was hemmed in by detectives from his regiment that were continually traversing the city in colored clothes, or stationed as look-outs at certain points in its vicinity. Barry was most anxious that this poor fellow should not be left behind, and as Greaves promised to procure a disguise for him and have him conveyed secretly to Tom’s on the night that the project of leaving the Fort was to be put into execution, Barry, at the request of Greaves, penned a note, which he hastily sealed with a love device well known to the deserter, and which he had himself received at the hands of the beautiful girl of his heart. The note ran thus:—

“Place the fullest confidence in the bearer. Follow his directions
implicitly. Your fate hangs in the balance. He will lead you to
where we shall meet. In great haste, &c.,
“NICHOLAS BARRY.”

This note he handed to Greaves, who immediately consigned it to his pocket-book, and set forth, as he alleged, to reconoitre the hiding place of the soldier, and make such arrangements in his behalf as the necessities of the case required.

As the brief missive just quoted was written in O’Brien’s, and in the presence of Tom himself, when Greaves left the premises, the host with some uneasiness observed:—

“I don’t know how it is, Nick, but somehow or other I cannot divest myself of sartain lurkin suspicions which I have of that man; although there is not a single Irish Nationalist in the city that would not offer him his hand and a glass afther seein the letther that I saw. However, you will remimber that the first night he came I didn’t warm to him, as I tould you, notwithstandin that I had to give up the next mornin. Still, and withal he appears to be actin fair, although I can’t make out exactly what he’s about here. Any way, in for a pinny in for a pound, so we must make the best of it; but, if I find that he is playin foul—well, God Almighty help him, and that’s all I’ll say. However, three nights from this will tell the whole story, and if you all make good your escape, you may take my word for it, I’ll make a clane breast of it to him and ask his pardon into the bargain. I think with you that it was wise not to write to Kate about your throuble and disappointment, or apprise her of your intintion, as it would only agonize the poor craytshure; but should you be foiled and taken, what a dreadful thing it would be for her to hear instead of the intelligence of your freedom, that you were in the depths of a dungeon from which you might have no manes of escape for years!”

Barry absolutely shuddered at the possibility of such a denouement to the scheme that now absorbed his whole mind and soul. Although sensible of the risk he ran, he never paused to regard the peculiar features of the case as presented by his friend; but now that they loomed up before him in such bold and fearful relief, he almost shrank from pushing farther the dangerous project he had undertaken. Yet, there was no other channel through which he could hope to become speedily the husband of the woman he loved; while, if he abandoned it, he might probably be separated from her forever, as he felt convinced, that should an ocean roll once more between them, she would not long survive the calamity. In a moment, then, the faintness of his heart had passed away, and in its stead came the firm resolve to prosecute his design to the death; feeling that imprisonment for any term of years on the shores trodden by the being he adored, was preferable to freedom, such as it was, in a land cut off from her by the trackless desert of the great deep.

Re-assured once more, then, he continued cautiously the preparations for his departure, attending to his duties with his usual assiduity, and still murmuring at the decision of the Colonel. Neither he nor Tom, of course, ever approached the hiding place of the refugee already mentioned, although they managed to hear from him occasionally, and to keep his spirits up. Had either, by day or night, ventured near his retreat, they could scarcely have escaped notice—the one from his soldier’s uniform and the other from his remarkable height and personal appearance; they were, therefore, with all their misgivings, relieved of their embarrassment in this relation, by the generous offer of Greaves, who, as it seemed, had abundance of means at his command to further any project that he might think proper to undertake relative to the escape of the deserter, or those who had now determined to join him.

In this way, then, matters stood on the very evening which was to close in the night selected by the intending fugitives, to put their designs into execution. Everything was ready, and as the clock struck twelve and the streets of the city were partially deserted, a cab rumbled up to the door of The Harp, and Greaves and a stranger, muffled to the eyes, stepping from it, entered the establishment and passed through the bar into Tom’s little parlor. Greaves had kept his faith—the stranger was the deserter!

CHAPTER IX.

As might be presumed, from what we have already said regarding Kate McCarthy, from the moment she took up her abode with her relatives at Buffalo, she resumed her industrious habits, and set to work, in real earnest, to add something to whatever young Barry had realized from his own abilities and steady conduct on both sides of the Atlantic; for, since his arrival in Canada, he had plied his pen amongst his comrades, and in other quarters, copying papers and instructing the children of the soldiers where he was stationed. She consequently soon found her little store increased, and her time fully occupied. In music and the earlier branches of English, she had several young pupils; while for some of the fancy millinery stores of the city, she occasionally employed her needle on some of those delicate and exquisite ornaments of female dress which are at once so expensive and attractive. Her labors were, of course, cheered through constant intercourse by letter with Barry; and so the time rolled on up to the very point when Nicholas first applied for his discharge. It may be considered strange, that Barry had not left the service on his first arrival in Canada; but, then, let it be understood, that neither he nor Kate had yet acquired sufficient means with which to begin the world; while both were steadily accumulating a little, slowly but safely; and when, besides, he felt assured, that having the means at his command, he could, at any moment, procure his discharge. We have already said, that owing to his proud and unyielding nature, he was not a favorite with his officers, and that such being the case, he never ‘rose above the ranks; but, then, after all, the most of his superiors had, at times, recourse to his pen and excellent education in various matters connected with the regiment, requiting him for his services handsomely enough; but still at enmity with his Irish blood, and what they feared was, his anti-British tendencies. Such inducements as these, although accompanied with drawbacks, moved him to remain in the service for a longer period than he should have done under other circumstances, and reconciled his lover to an absence which she believed could be terminated at any moment. And so time sped with her, until the eve of the very day, on the night of which Barry and his comrades were to leave the Fort, when returning towards her home in the direction of Black Bock, from the city, just as it began to get dusk, she was met by an over-dressed stranger, who accosting her in a most respectful manner, begged to know if she could direct him to the residence of Miss Kate McCarthy.

After recovering her surprise, and casting a searching glance at her interrogator, she replied, that she was, herself, Miss McCarthy, and begged to know what was his business with her. The man appeared to hesitate, as if not crediting her assertion, and proceeded to say, that he had a message for Miss McCarthy, but that he was led to believe that that lady was a much older person than the one whom he now addressed.

“Possibly,” returned Kate, “there is some other lady of my name here; but if such be the case, I am totally unaware of it. However,” she continued, “as I expect no message from any person of my acquaintance, doubtless I am not the person you seek,” and bowing slightly to the stranger, she turned to pursue her way in the direction of her home.

“I beg your pardon for attempting to delay you,” rejoined the stranger, “but after all, you may be the lady I seek. If you are,” he went on to say, “you will be apt to recognize this token;” holding something in his hand, which he now thrust out towards her.

In an instant, her whole manner altered, her cheeks flushed, and a strange light burned in her eyes, as she exclaimed hurriedly, and while greatly agitated:

“Yes, I am the person; let us walk towards the house. It is but a short distance from where we stand.”

In a few moments, they were both engaged in the most earnest conversation, and evidently entering into some stipulation that was to be carried out without delay. On nearing her residence, however, the stranger expressed his opinion, that it were better that he should return to the city at once, and make some arrangements in connection with the subject of their conversation, whatever that was; enforcing upon her, in the meantime, the most profound secrecy, and the strange necessity, above all things, of not informing any of her friends or relations of the project upon which they had decided.

“Twelve o’clock, at the Lower Ferry, then!” observed the stranger, as he turned his face towards the city.

“Twelve o’clock!” she returned. “No fear! I shall be awaiting you!”

When she entered the house, with a view to concealing her emotions and making some secret preparations for the accomplishment of the sudden project foreshadowed by the words of the stranger, she hastily gained her chamber. When alone, she gazed confused yet enraptured on the unexpected talisman that had been given her, and which she still held firmly in her grasp. Soon, however, becoming more calm, she set about making such arrangements for her midnight tryst as she conceived necessary; upon the completion of which, she penned a few lines to her kind relatives, begging them to make no inquiries after her, as she was safe; although, for reasons afterwards to be explained, she was obliged to leave their roof by stealth, and for the moment in utter darkness as to her destination. She assured them, nevertheless, that although her conduct was for the present suspicious and inexplicable, she was free from any taint of wrong, and was only obeying a voice that would soon justify to the fullest, and before them personally, the step she was now about to take. This note was left upon her bed-room table, where she knew it would be discovered; so, after declining to join the family at tea, on the plea of slight indisposition, she filled a traveling satchel with what necessaries she thought she might require for the few days she presumed she should be absent, and extinguishing her lamp at the hour she usually retired to rest, awaited, alone and in silence, for the clock to strike eleven; at which time she knew the family would have all sought their couch and be sunk in slumber.

From her chamber window she perceived that the lights soon began to disappear from the casements of the few dwellings that were in the immediate vicinity of her habitation, and that the quiet of repose was stealing over the neighborhood. Busied with her own thoughts, and anxious for the future, the time for her departure drew nigh more rapidly than she had anticipated; so, when the last stroke of eleven had died away through the house, she, having previously attired herself for her journey, and secured, about her person, whatever money she possessed, took up her satchel, and cautiously descending the stairs, soon emerged out into the gloomy night, hastily bending her footsteps towards the place of rendezvouz.

Here, besides encountering the individual already introduced to the reader, who was waiting for her, she having had to travel a considerable distance, and it being now close on midnight, she found a second party stationed by the side of a good sized boat, into which all three stepped upon her arrival; the two strangers seizing the oars and striking boldly out for the Canadian side of the river. Although rapid the current at the point of their crossing, so admirably did they manage their craft and lustily did they pull, they did not deviate much from the light on the opposite shore, which seemed to gleam from some cottage window, and which they took as a beacon and guide to their course. In the space of about half an hour, they landed at the point they expected to make, where they found a team waiting, with a lantern so ingeniously fixed in the wagon as to be discernible from the American side of the river only; this being the light by which the two boatmen had steered.

As they all stepped ashore, Kate had a full opportunity of scrutinizing the appearance of the second stranger, who aided her in crossing the river. He was a short, thick-set, heavy man, of a most forbidding aspect, with a huge mouth and a broad, flat nose, without a bridge. He wore a blue flannel shirt and a heavy, short over-coat and slouched hat, and was, taking him all and all, about as villainous a looking specimen of humanity as one could well meet in a day’s walk. Nor was the driver of the wagon into which she now was lifted, a very decided improvement in this relation. He, also, was a most suspicions looking fellow, although civil enough in his way. Kate felt relieved, however, when her earliest acquaintance of the evening took his seat beside her, and when she perceived the man with the blue shirt re-entering the boat and pushing off for the American shore once again.

The driver now having adjusted himself in his place in front of Kate and her polite companion, the whip was laid to the horses, and the party moved briskly along the bank of the river, until they struck into a road which evidently led into the interior of the country. This road they pursued at a slow pace until the first gray streaks of dawn were visible in the eastern horizon; Kate’s companion, from time to time, making such commonplace observations as the necessity of the case required; she supposing that the presence of the driver prevented him from offering her any farther explanation on the subject of her singular adventure. Just as surrounding objects were becoming more distinct, they pulled up before an isolated building, in what appeared to be a country place, and in which, early as it was, there was some person already astir, as was evident from the light which shone from one of the windows.

Here they all alighted and were received at the door of the dwelling by a middle aged woman, with a strip of red silk bound round her head and drawn down over one of her eyes. She was dressed in a plain but neat manner, and exhibited sufficient traits of feminine beauty to recommend her to either sex. The driver was evidently her husband, and no very affectionate one either, if the coarse, cold manner in which he received her welcome could be taken as any indication on this head. However, as Kate was cold and weary, she gladly accepted an invitation to alight and enter the building, where she found a large fire blazing and crackling upon the hearth, in an apartment that was used as a dining-room and kitchen; although the house was a large one and clearly contained many apartments. When seated by the fire, and while the driver was seeing to his horses, her companion, who also seated himself by the warm blaze, informed her that, for the present, she was at the end of her journey—that the driver, his wife and a grown up niece or daughter, were the only inhabitants of the house, and that the place was selected as her retreat for the time being, for reasons that would doubtless be explained to her in due time. Although surprised and mystified at all she had already experienced, she, of course, had not one word to say in opposition to the disposition that had been made of her; for had she not in her bosom the guarantee that all was right; so, professing her willingness to remain in her temporary abode until the period for her release arrived, and promising to be as patient as possible, under the circumstances, she begged the woman of the house to show her to her room, as she needed a few hours rest, to which request her hostess readily acceded, having first, though in vain, endeavored to prevail upon her to take some refreshments after her journey.

The room to which Kate was shown was far from a despicable one, and possessed many articles of furniture infinitely superior to those in the department she had first entered. The floor was carpeted, and the chairs and tables of quite a superior quality; the bed, also, seemed invitingly clean and comfortable, while some excellent books were to be found in a small, neat case, standing in one corner of the apartment. On the table there burned a handsome lamp, and a fire blazed cheerfully in a small, open stove, as though her arrival had been expected and well cared for. When her hostess left her, she examined her chamber door and windows, and found the latter quite secure, while in the lock of the former was a key, one turn of which would cut her off completely from any intrusion whatever. Seating herself beside her lamp, she reviewed rapidly the events of the night, and finding no solution for them, she slowly undressed, and consigning herself to the care of heaven, was soon lost in a calm and refreshing slumber, from which she did not awake until the sun had nearly attained his meridian glory.

When she opened her eyes and collected her scattered senses, she hastily arose, and dressing herself, rang a small bell that lay on her table, and which her hostess desired she should use when she required any attendance. Immediately a gentle tap was heard at her chamber door, upon opening which, a young girl, about sixteen years of age, presented herself with a pitcher of fresh water, begging to know, as she placed it on the wash-stand, at what period she should bring up breakfast; setting about opening the windows as she spoke, and otherwise busying herself in arranging the room. There was something in the appearance of this young creature, that at once enlisted the sympathy and kindly feelings of Kate. Her features were strangely handsome and prepossessing, and her form of the very finest proportions. Her hands, although rough with hard work, were, nevertheless, small and delicately shaped, while her feet, notwithstanding that they were encased in a pair of over-large slippers, were obviously very beautiful. She was tall for her age, and apparently better educated than her seeming condition in life might warrant. But what was most peculiar about her, was an air of sadness, that seemed native to her expressive countenance, and which pervaded her smiles even, with a strange, subduing power, that nearly allied them to gentle tears. Her voice, too, was singularly sweet, low and melodious; while her whole demeanor was so tinged with what might be termed some lone, hidden sorrow, that Kate felt drawn towards her in a manner the most unaccountable. In answer to a query put to her, she said she was not, as was generally supposed, the daughter of the owners of the establishment, but their niece, as she believed; and that she had now been residing in the locality for over five years. That her uncle did a great deal of teaming, and was often from home; and that, in his absence, she and her aunt took care of a small patch of ground that lay at the back of the house. She was almost glad, she said, that the lady had come to stay sometime with them, and hoped that she would allow her to often sit by her and read during the times her uncle would be away; as it might tend to beguile many a weary hour; that is, provided the lady would have to remain any length of time with them.

There was something in all this which seemed to move Kate strangely. The expression “almost glad” sounded curiously in her ears, and awakened in her feelings of a no very pleasurable character. However, she determined, upon so slight an acquaintance, not to push her inquiries further just then; and by way of forming a friendly compact with her attendant, assured her, that so long as she remained in the house, she should always be happy to have her as a companion whenever she could be spared from her domestic duties; and further, that it would afford her the greatest possible pleasure to sit and listen to her, whenever she could find a moment’s time to either read for her or while away a few minutes in friendly conversation. This condescension seemed to light up the face of the interesting young creature with a flush of gratitude the most ardent; and with a lighter step than that with which she had entered the chamber, she tripped away, for the purpose of bringing up the breakfast to which she had already referred.

When Martha, as Kate’s new acquaintance was called, again entered the apartment, she was accompanied by her aunt, who was dressed just as she had been the night before, with the exception that the strip of red silk had been replaced by a purple band of the same material. As the breakfast, which was excellent for a country place, was being placed upon the table, Kate perceived that one side of the woman’s face was discolored, and being moved to make some inquiries regarding the cause, was informed, that while breaking up some kindling wood, a splinter had accidentally struck her face. This went to satisfy her, of course, although she thought the large, black patch which fell down along the cheek was singularly dark and wide to be traceable to the small splinter that the woman asserted to be the cause of it. A strange look from Martha, too, aroused a suspicion that the origin of the disfigurement was not that named; so here the matter rested for the present.

During her repast, she learned from Martha, who remained with her, that the name of the people of the house was Wilson; that they were English, and that the person who had arrived in company with her uncle, who was also English, was called Stephen Smith; but where he resided she was unable to say. This she knew, however, that he made occasional visits to the family, and was sometimes accompanied by a very ill-looking man, who remained a day or two, after having left some boxes or cases in charge of her uncle, who subsequently disposed of them in some manner unknown to her.

“But,” she continued, “I don’t like these men. They always come in the night, and go away in the night, and are ever whispering; you must not, however,” she went on to say, “mention this to either my aunt or my uncle; for, if they should know I had said so much, they would doubtless be very angry with me.”

“Oh!” returned Kate, “you may rely upon it, that whatever you may choose to say in relation to the men in question, or anything else, shall remain in my bosom; for to betray any confidence of the kind, would, in my eyes, be criminal in the last degree.”

“What brought you here, then!—what brought you here!” ejaculated Martha, in an anxious, nervous tone. “There must be something wrong!—some treachery, or I am sure a lady so good and pure as you seem to be, would never cross this threshold.”

Kate, becoming instantly alarmed, broke off suddenly in her repast, and begged the young girl, for Heaven’s sake, to be more explicit.

“I really don’t know what more to say than I have already said,” replied the girl; “but, as I feel drawn towards you by some invisible power, short as our acquaintance has been, I will say, that I fear my uncle’s associates are lawless men, and believe that my aunt knows it, and regrets it, too. But a few nights ago, when Smith came here to make arrangements about your arrival, as I suppose, I heard high words between my relatives after his departure, and, the next morning, found my aunt’s face just as you have seen it. But we dare not say much in opposition to any proposition that my uncle might choose to make in any connection, so violent and brutal is his temper at times. For my own part, however,” she proceeded, “so soon as I can escape from such thraldom and associations, I shall try and make my own way in the world; for my impression is, my uncle has some idea of a union between me and the detestable creature, Smith, who accompanied you here last night, and who, after an hour’s rest, was again driven off by my uncle, doubtless to whatever point he came from.”

This intelligence, as may be supposed, caused poor Kate the greatest possible anxiety; but what had she to fear so long as she took the talisman for her guide? Here there could be no mistake, anyway; for had she not it in her bosom, and was it not from him? Still, that there was something perfectly mysterious about the whole affair, she was quite ready to admit; but as she had received the strictest injunctions from Smith not to permit herself to be seen for the present in the vicinity of the place, or outside the dwelling, she determined to obey one to whom no small power in her case had unquestionably been delegated by her lover.

During the day Martha and Kate were frequently together—the poor young girl disclosing her history scrap by scrap, until at last Kate learned that she was in reality an orphan; that both her parents died when she was yet quite young; that her aunt, who was possessed of an excellent education, had been twice married—once to her own mother’s brother, and subsequently to the man whom she now called uncle; that her own parents had been Irish, and that on their death, her real uncle became her guardian and true friend until his death; when, on this second, unfortunate marriage, the affairs of the family becoming hopelessly embarrassed, she and her relatives embarked for America, taking up their abode first in Toronto, and subsequently in the place where they now resided. In addition, she stated that her opportunities of education had been good, and that, somehow or other, since she had crossed the Atlantic, she managed to keep a few choice books about her, and avail herself of the assistance of her aunt, whenever they could, in the absence of her uncle, devote an hour to study or the perusal of some new work.

The small clearing, on the verge of which the house occupied by the Wilsons stood, was surrounded with woods, and no other habitation was to be found in its immediate vicinity. From the morose disposition and suspicious character of the proprietor himself, but few of the neighbors were on visiting terms with the family; so that they might be said to lead a completely sequestered life. From time to time only, an occasional visit was paid him by some one who stood in need of the services of his team; and thus his standing in the neighborhood was that of a suspected or banned man—the general impression being, that he was neither more nor less than a dangerous and daring smuggler, who was constantly engaged in the interests of unprincipled merchants on both sides of the lines. This idea obtained footing from the circumstance that he had been observed returning late one night from the frontier with his wagon laden down with suspicious looking boxes and bales; and from the further fact, that his absences from home were frequently lengthy and mysterious—no one knowing the precise nature of his business, or the points to which his journeys were made so often.

The clearing, itself, was under good cultivation, the spring crops giving fine promise of an abundant harvest. A short distance from the house flowed a beautiful brook, whose murmurs occasionally reached the ears of the inmates; while the thickening foliage of the surrounding groves, as they might be termed, gave shelter to various birds, amongst which might now be heard, at early morn and throughout the day, the clear, round notes of the robin.

“The robin!”—what on earth has, we should like to know, bewitched ornithologists to designate the great, coarse, tuneless bird, that visits us in the earliest dawn of spring, in this far off America, “the robin?” Neither in throat nor plumage is it even a thirty-first cousin of the sweet, timid, little, brown bunch of melody that haunts the hawthorn hedges of Ireland and the sister island, when they are in bloom, or seeks a crumb at the open casement, when winter ruffles all its russet plumes, and sets his chill, white seal on all its stores; We have been often struck with the great dissimilarity between these two namesakes of the feathered kingdom; for never on these transatlantic shores have we heard what might be termed a domestic bird sing a song so sweet as that poured beneath our window in the soft blue haze of an Irish summer evening, by the genuine robin-red-breast, as he sang the daylight down the west, through a sky flushed and flecked with azure, crimson and gold, to such extreme intensity, that the poet or painter might, at the moment, half indulge in the idea, that the sun had fallen into curious ruins upon the verge of the horizon. Oh! the silver thread of such a song, as it flashed and scintillated from that trembling throat! Never shall we forget it, or the land in which it first wound itself around our heart.

But this, we know, is inclined to be sentimental; and as we now have to do with stern realities, we shall resume the chain of our story by saying, that after her first day’s residence with the Wilsons, and finding that the uncle of Martha had no intelligence for her on his return home on the evening or night succeeding the one of her arrival, she expressed her great anxiety to Martha, who now devoted every moment she could spare from her other duties, to the pleasing task of rendering her solitude as agreeable as possible.

On the morning of the second day after her arrival she ventured to ask Wilson if he had any idea of when she was to be relieved from her embarrassing position. In reply to her interrogatory he assured her, that he was quite unable to give her any information on the subject, but was led to believe that she should not be long a prisoner, as he termed it. All he could say in relation to the matter was, that some person, with whose name even he was unacquainted, had secured, through a third party, his services as her host, and engaged the apartment she occupied, and attendance, etc. In addition to this, he observed, carelessly, that he was responsible for her safety until the arrival of those who had delegated to him the right to watch over her and shield her from observation until the proper moment arrived.

To all this Kate made no reply; the thought having just struck her, that Nicholas had perhaps learned of some intended design upon her by Lauder, and that he took this method of transporting her to some point unknown to that person, until he himself could offer her his full and unembarrassed protection. Yet she wondered why it was that he had left her in such dreadful uncertainty, and did not write her explicitly upon the subject Again, she was perplexed at the idea that he was in no position to learn anything of the plots or plans of her rejected suitor, if he entertained any; so that, upon the whole, she was in no very comfortable state of mind when she rejoined Martha whom she had left in her chamber, and whom she now induced to make up a bed upon a sofa and consent to sleep in her apartment during her stay.

Martha, on her part, moved by this token of friendship, and while sitting up late on the very night of the conversation with Wilson, became mysteriously nervous and, through various vague hints and insinuations, so far alarmed Kate at last, that the poor girl implored her new acquaintance to tell her frankly if she knew anything that bore upon her ease, or the reasons for her being so singularly circumstanced.

To this solicitation Martha made no direct reply; but rising cautiously, she stepped lightly towards the chamber door, and opening it softly put out her head into the passage and listened for a few moments. Then gently closing the door, she again noiselessly retraced her steps, and drawing her seat close beside that of Kate, began thus, in a low, trembling voice, in which fear and agitation were distinctly traceable:

“Oh! Miss McCarthy, horrible as the disclosure is, I believe that, instead of a smuggler, which my aunt and I long supposed him to be, my uncle is a robber, or leagued with robbers! This, for the first-time, came to our knowledge last night, after his return from wherever he had been. We had been always accustomed to his bringing here, during the night, mysterious packages; but as he informed us that they were goods for merchants who, as he asserted, resided at some distance, we took him at his word, and when he removed the goods again were, of course, under the firm impression that he carried them to their owners. However, as I have observed, on returning last night, when my aunt and I were assisting him to remove a heavy case from his wagon, while carrying it into the stable to place it under the hay beneath which he invariably concealed such things, my aunt and I perceived that, this time, it was a large trunk that he had brought, and that the lock had given way, disclosing gleams within it, as though it contained some bright objects. He did not notice the circumstance of the fastening having failed, and we did not call his attention to the fact; but permitted him to shake the hay over it as usual. Subsequently, however, my aunt and I referred to the matter, when she, taking advantage of my uncle’s sound slumbers, he having retired to rest before her, went out again and, re-lighting the stable lantern, removed the covering from the lid of the great trunk, and raising it, perceived that it contained many valuable articles of silver and dress; but all evidently old, and huddled together in a manner the most confused. This almost paralysed the poor woman, and as I subsequently inspected the package, on her retiring for the night, I arrived at the conclusion which she had, as she informed me, herself previously adopted; namely, that the goods were stolen, and that Smith was in some way mixed up with the robbery.”

Now, indeed, Kate felt her situation alarming in the truest sense of the term, and sat looking at her companion in speechless horror and amazement. Mystery upon mystery it was; but as the dangers that appeared to surround her, though gloomy, were indistinct, she once more had recourse to her panacea of the token, and seeking her couch with a fervent prayer on her lip, was soon, like her young friend on the sofa, lost in uneasy slumbers.

CHAPTER X.

It was on the night of Sunday the 27th of May, 1866, that Barry and his comrades were to attempt their escape from the Fort; and, as already seen, it was on the same night that the deserter was conveyed in a cab to The Harp, by Greaves. Two o’clock in the morning was the time decided upon, and a rendezvous having been appointed, our hero, who was on guard, saw, without challenging them, six figures steal by him into the darkness and immediately disappear. No sooner had the last of them vanished, than he placed his musket bolt upright in his sentry box, and the next moment was lost also in the gloom, and in the direction in which the figures had melted from his vision. Soon he reached the side of the river, where he found Tom with a boat, beside which stood his six companions. On recognizing him, they all leaped into the boat, and, although the moon was in the heavens, sheltered by the dark overhanging clouds that fortunately filled the sky, they dropped down the river, and landing Tom at a point previously decided upon, they all wrung his hand in silence, and once more put forth into the gloom, heading their craft towards the American shore, under the guidance of a pilot who knew every island and turn in the channel, and who joined them at the spot where O’Brien bid them farewell. With muffled oars and in the most profound silence, they moved along until they arrived at a turn in the channel, where they were instructed to bend to their work by the stranger who held the tiller; when, taking heart from their good fortune, for so far, they made their willing craft almost leap out of the water, as they gave a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether.

As day was beginning to shape the world around them, they found themselves nearing the American shore, and now perceiving themselves beyond the reach of danger and out of the jurisdiction of the flag they had so long and so cordially detested, they rested on their oars, and giving three hearty cheers for the land they were fast approaching, again set to with a will, and soon found themselves beneath the Stars and Stripes of the glorious Republic before which all the nations of the earth now bow, however reluctantly. On leaping ashore, they discovered a short distance from the water a small village to which, on securing their boat, they all posted; and having gained a neat little tavern, the shutters of which were just being opened, they explained their situation to the proprietor, and ordered breakfast, determined to rest themselves for a period, and deliberate upon their future movements, although the destination of Barry had, of course, long been decided upon.

On hearing that they were deserters from the British army, and that, without an exception, they were all Irishmen, who had come to the United States with a view to aiding in any project that had for its object the humiliation of England, and the freedom of Ireland, the landlord, who was a six-footer from Tipperary—one of the Cummingses—gave “a yell out of him” that brought his wife and children in deshabille to the bar-room door, proceeded by a boy of all work, who evidently shared their alarm and surprise to the fullest extent; but when, instead of a bar-room disturbance, they perceived the master of the premises shaking hands over and over again with the new arrivals, and bidding them welcome to the land of the free, they soon disappeared from the hall and regained their chambers, from which they had been so unceremoniously summoned. Cummings was literally in his glory, and instantly had his counter be-littered with glasses, bottles and decanters; while, with genuine hospitality, he made the fugitives partake more than once of some one of the beverages that he had placed before them. Ere long a smoking, hot breakfast was in readiness for them, prepared by the mistress of the house,—herself a comely Irishwoman, with a set of teeth that you’d almost let bite you, they were so white and sunny, and a handsome, fair face, with a cead mille failte in every line and dimple of it. Already the poor adventurers began to feel the exhilarating effects of freedom, and, as soon as they had satisfied their appetites, each set about changing his soldier’s coat for a rough, plain one, which had been provided by O’Brien and his friends, and which they found awaiting them when they first entered the boat.

As Barry, who was regarded as chief of the little party, avowed his intention of pushing on direct for Buffalo, the others, who had no fixed point in view, determined to join him; so, when they had taken a few hours repose, they parted from their kind host and hostess, who would not permit them to pay a single shilling for anything they had drank or eaten since they entered the friendly hostel. During the time they were waiting at the railway station, they heard various rumors as to the intended invasion of the Province they had but just left; and from numerous significant hints which they had received, they were fully convinced that some important movement was on foot, which would soon develope itself in bolder outline. On entering the cars that were to take them west, they found the subject of Fenianism freely discussed, and in many cases with a friendliness that showed there was, in some instances at least, a feeling hostile to England among the American people. As they pursued their journey and received other accessions to their numbers as travellers, they found that this aversion was both widely spread and deeply rooted, so that by the time they reached their destination, they were fully satisfied that the people of America, and those of the adjoining English Colony, could never become true friends so long as the latter adheared to the standard of Great Britain, or remained part and parcel of the British empire. The antagonism of institutions, the infamous conduct of England during the late civil war, and the fixed impression of every true American, that the Canadas belong of right to the great people who now rule the continent, made it strikingly apparant that England had but a precarious foot-hold upon the shores of the New World.

On the arrival of the train at Black Rock, Barry, who had been previously informed as to the precise locality in which the relatives of Kate were to be found, stepped off the cars, informing his comrades that he would join them in the city during the day. With but little difficulty he found the dwelling of his friends, and entering it, was received with open arms, and was instantly asked as to where he left Kate. For a moment he did not comprehend the question, but when by degrees he heard the fearful disclosure, that she had secretly left the house, by night, about a week previously, he fell into a chair, almost fainting, while the greatest consternation seized all those about him. Slowly, and with their hearts sinking within them, they recounted the circumstance of the note that had been written and left for them on her bedroom table, and the fact of her having taken some of her wearing apparel with her, but as to where she had gone, or with whom, they were in the most profound darkness. No one had called at the house,—no previous intimation had been given them by her as to her intentions; and, in so far as they were concerned, all was darkness. Lauder, they knew, had been in the vicinity of the Rock, but then, of course, he could have had no hand in the strange transaction, as her detestation of him precluded, as they thought, the possibility of his exercising the slightest influence over any of her actions. However, she was gone, and now, as it appeared, was the victim of some horrible plot or mistake beyond the reach of any elucidation, for the present at least.

Never was a strong man so bowed to the dust as the poor young fellow who now found all his hopes so rudely and unexpectedly dashed to the earth. With a face pale as death he shook throughout every limb in a manner fearful to behold. In vain he looked from one face to another for some explanation of the dreadful calamity that had befallen him—all was dark and blank and silent around him. Even conjecture was paralysed, so completely was the disappearance of his betrothed enveloped in mystery. As a preliminary step, to gain even the feeblest information of her, he did not know how, or when or where to move. Could he get even the slightest glimpse of any link in the chain, he could set about unravelling the tangled and gloomy skein; but as it was, he was as helpless as a child. Secure in her fidelity, however, and trusting to Providence, crushed as he was, his young heart, after the first blow, began to rise within him, and collecting himself, he set about making such enquiries in the neighborhood as he thought were likely to throw some light upon the subject. In this he was warmly aided by the alarmed wife of his friend, who learned that on the very evening of the night of her disappearance, after having given her last music lesson in the house of one of her pupils, she was seen in company with a man, who was recognized as no very respectable character, by one of the hands employed in the rolling mills, who happened to catch a glimpse of them in conversation as he was returning from his work. The name of this latter individual having been ascertained, Barry at once visited the mills and heard, to his consternation, that the suspicious person seen in company with Kate on the evening referred to, was neither more nor less than the Kid, previously introduced to the reader, as one of the keepers of the low gambling house already mentioned, where we first met him and his partner of the blue shirt, alluded to also as a burglar and robber.

This much ascertained, Nicholas prevailed upon the workman to accompany him to the den in question, into which they accidentally dropped as it were. The person they sought was, as usual, about the premises; but from him Barry could gain no information whatever, beyond the circumstance, that he did remember, about a week ago, accosting a lady near Black Bock, having taken the liberty of enquiring of her, whether a certain person whom he was anxious to find resided in the neighborhood.

“I know that’s a lie,” said the workman, when he and Nicholas had gained the street once more, “for as I happened to come upon them just as they were separating, I heard the lady say, before she perceived me, and as I was turning a corner of the road, ‘I’ll not fail to be there,’ or words to that effect.”

Ridgeway: An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada

RIDGEWAY

AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE OF THE FENIAN INVASION OF CANADA

By Scian Dubh

“On our side is virtue and Erin;On theirs’ is the Saxon and guilt.”—MOORE.

1868

INTRODUCTION.

RIDGEWAY

AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE OF THE FENIAN INVASION OF CANADA.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

“On our side is virtue and Erin;
On theirs’ is the Saxon and guilt.”—MOORE.