the
rabble.

Smith O'Brien proved himself an arrant coward. He hid in a cabbage
garden, and is still believed to have made his temporary escape from the
police in the habit of an Anglican sisterhood, of which his sister, Hon.
Mrs. Monsell, was Mother Superior.

The bigger outbreak was not a bit more serious. It was all trumped up by
the Irish in America, and their reliance upon help from American
soldiers was destroyed after the war. This agitation was the one known
as the work of the Phoenix Society, and the object was the separation of
Ireland from England and the confiscation of Irish property.

The leaders were James Stephens, who had nearly escaped being shot by a
policeman in the Smith O'Brien campaign, and that indomitable scoundrel
O'Donovan Rossa. It was at this time we began to hear of mysterious
strangers. In this case it was Stephens; later Parnell wrapped himself
in strange isolation; and subsequently Tynan, who was known as 'Number
One.'

Cork and Kerry were the chosen parts of Ireland for the new Fenianism to
come to a head, and a certain amount of enrolling and drilling did take
place.

I was then residing within two miles of the city of Cork, and one night
the Fenians came out and encamped all round my house, without offering
the slightest molestation or injury to anybody.

Two Fenians walked into the house of my stableman, about a quarter of a
mile from my own, and asked for food, saying they were ready to pay for
it.

The woman replied that she had no food in the house, but the breakfast
of her brother Charles, which she was about to take to him in the
stables.

They wanted to pay her a shilling for it, but she declined, and then
they went away quietly.

The principal outbreak was to be in Killarney, and they plotted to
attack the police barrack at Cahirciveen, because they had an ally in
the son of the head constable.

But a man in the town, to whom he had shown kindness, warned the head
constable of the attack, which in the end consisted of a few shots fired
by a ragged rabble of about three hundred, half of whom were
half-hearted, and the other half half-drunk.

The coastguards manned their boat and rowed off to a gunboat in the
harbour to ask for some marines; and the moment this was known to the
besiegers they dispersed. Some of them marched rather downcast towards
Killarney, and on the road they met a mounted policeman riding to warn
Cahirciveen of the attack which was to be mad