, or were not of force. Mr. Roberts was officially informed
that the sentence would infallibly be carried out. By this time barely
a few days remained of the interval previous to the date fixed for
the execution, and the strangest sensations swayed the public mind in
Ireland. Even still, no one would seriously credit that men would be
put to death on a verdict notoriously false. Some persons who proposed
memorials to the Queen were met on all hands with the answer that it
was all "acting" on the part of the government; that, even though it
should be at the foot of the scaffold, the men would be reprieved;
that the government would not--_dare not_--take away human life on a
verdict already vitiated and abandoned as a perjury or blunder.

The day of doom approached; and now, as it came nearer and nearer,
a painful and sickening alternation of incredulity and horror surged
through every Irish heart. Meanwhile, the Press of England, on
both sides of the Channel, kept up a ceaseless cry for blood. The
government were told that to let these men off, innocent or guilty,
would be "weakness." They were called upon to be "firm"--that is, to
hang first, and reflect afterwards. As the 23rd of November drew near,
the opinion began to gain ground, even in England, that things had
been too hastily done--that the whole trial bore all the traces of
panic--and that, if a few weeks were given for alarm and passion
to calm down, not a voice would approve the Manchester verdict.
Perceiving this--perceiving that time or opportunity for reflection,
or for the subsidence of panic, would almost certainly snatch its prey
from vengeance--a deafening yell arose from the raving creatures of
blood-hunger, demanding that not a day, not an hour, not a second,
should be granted to the condemned.

Still the Irish people would not credit that, far towards the close of
the nineteenth century, an act so dreadful durst be done.

During all this time the condemned lay in Salford gaol, tortured by
the suspense inevitably created by Maguire's reprieve. Although every
effort was made by their friends to keep them from grasping at or
indulging in hope, the all-significant fact of that release seemed
to imperatively forbid the idea of their being executed on a verdict
whose falseness was thus confessed. The moment, however, that the
singular conduct of the judges in London defeated the application of
Mr. Roberts, they, one and all, resigned themselves to the wo