re ready to die for their country. Sentence
of death was passed, and, as echo to the sardonic "The Lord have mercy
on your souls," rang back from the dock in five clear voices, with
never a quiver of fear in them, "God save Ireland!" and the men passed
one by one from the sight of my tear-dimmed eyes.

It was a sorrowful time that followed; the despair of the heart-broken
girl who was Allen's sweetheart, and who cried to us on her knees,
"Save my William!" was hard to see; nothing we or any one could do
availed to avert the doom, and on November 23rd Allen, Larkin, and
O'Brien were hanged outside Salford Gaol. Had they striven for freedom
in Italy England would have honoured them; here she buried them as
common murderers in quicklime in the prison yard.

I have found, with a keen sense of pleasure, that Mr. Bradlaugh and
myself were in 1867 to some extent co-workers, although we knew not of
each other's existence, and although he was doing much, and I only
giving such poor sympathy as a young girl might, who was only just
awakening to the duty of political work. I read in the _National
Reformer_ for November 24, 1867, that in the preceding week he was
pleading on Clerkenwell Green for these men's lives:--"According to
the evidence at the trial, Deasy and Kelly were illegally arrested.
They had been arrested for vagrancy of which no evidence was given, and
apparently remanded for felony without a shadow of justification. He
had yet to learn that in England the same state of things existed as in
Ireland; he had yet to learn that an illegal arrest was sufficient
ground to detain any of the citizens of any country in the prisons of
this one. If he were illegally held, he was justified in using enough
force to procure his release. Wearing a policeman's coat gave no
authority when the officer exceeded his jurisdiction. He had argued
this before Lord Chief Justice Erie in the Court of Common Pleas, and
that learned judge did not venture to contradict the argument which he
submitted. There was another reason why they should spare these men,
although he hardly expected the Government to listen, because the
Government sent down one of the judges who was predetermined to convict
the prisoners; it was that the offence was purely a political one. The
death of Brett was a sad mischance, but no one who read the evidence
could regard the killing of Brett as an intentional murder. Legally, it
was murder; morally, it was homicide in the