joined in:--

On the Curragh of Kildare,
And the boys will all be there,
With their pikes in good repair--
Says the _Shan Van Voct_!

"Igoe's porter!" a cynic might say. True, there may have been a glass or
two and a little harmless rejoicing, but this was too spontaneous to be
anything but the outpouring of the good, honest warm hearts of the poor
fellows, burning with love for the land that bore them.

Peter Maughan, who, like myself, was a house joiner, working at the
Curragh, had similar experiences. Indeed, you might say that he was then
qualifying himself for the part he very efficiently filled some years
later in the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, as recruiting officer
among the soldiery of Britain. Of course, he found scoundrels amongst
them too, for, as the history of the Fenian movement shows, he was
himself betrayed and sent to penal servitude.

Before I returned to England I had a most interesting tour through the
South of Ireland, that being, I may say, the most I have ever actually
seen of my own country. Having a taste for drawing, I took sketches of
the various noted places I visited, which I preserved for many
years--the most cherished remembrances of my visit to the "old sod."

After returning from the Curragh to Liverpool, I married there and
carried on business on my own account for several years as a joiner and
builder, before taking service with Father Nugent, first as secretary of
his Boy's Refuge, and then as conductor for some three years of his
newspaper, the "Northern Press and Catholic Times."

CHAPTER VI.

THE IRISH REVOLUTIONARY BROTHERHOOD--ESCAPE OF JAMES STEPHENS--PROJECTED
RAID ON CHESTER CASTLE--CORYDON THE INFORMER.

The trials in 1859, following the arrests in connection with the Phoenix
movement, with which the name of Jeremiah O'Donovan (called also
"Rossa," after his native place) was identified, were the first public
manifestations of what developed into the great organisation known in
America as the Fenian Brotherhood, and, on this side of the Atlantic as
the I.R.B., or Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood.

Many years afterwards "Rossa" called at the office of the Irish National
League in London, to see his old fellow-conspirator, James Francis
Xavier O'Brien, then General Secretary of the constitutional
organisation for the attainment of "Home Rule." As I was chief organiser
for the League in Great Britain, and was in the, office at the t