ted with the task of procuring arms for the
revolutionary movement. It speaks much for his sagacity that a man of
his impulsive and generous temperament should so long have escaped
arrest in connection with such hazardous undertakings. Hogan, however,
like Shemus O'Brien, "was taken at last."

Some of the revolvers brought from Birmingham by Daniel Darragh, which
had been used at the Hyde Road action, had been picked up from the
ground afterwards by the police. It was for supplying these that Hogan
was put upon his trial. The maker of the revolvers was brought from
Birmingham, and put in the witness box. He swore that a revolver
produced was one of his own make, which he had sold to the prisoner.
Thus, fortunately for Hogan, the whole case against him turned on this
point--not a very strong one, as it was obviously possible for the Crown
witness to be mistaken.

Hogan's counsel produced a similar revolver, and asked the witness if he
could identify it as his manufacture? The witness unhesitatingly did so.
The counsel, when his turn came, called another witness--a
decent-looking man of the artizan class. The barrister handed him the
revolver.

"Do you recognise it?" he asked.

"I do--I made it myself."

The Court was astonished. The prosecuting counsel asked:--

"How do you know it is yours?"

"By certain marks on it," the man replied, and these he proceeded to
describe. As the description was found to be correct, and as the other
witness, who had sworn that _he_ had made the weapon, had not described
any such marks, the case against Hogan broke down, and he was acquitted.

A few days afterwards he called on me, and explained how the thing had
happened. When he was arrested, his friends in Birmingham, having still
on hand some of the revolvers he had purchased, had an exact copy of one
of them made by a gunsmith whom they could trust, with instructions to
put his own private marks upon it, which he could afterwards identify.
It was this weapon that had deceived the witness for the prosecution to
such an extent that he wrongly swore to it as being his own manufacture.

Daniel Darragh, who was also put upon his trial for supplying the
weapons for the Manchester Rescue, was not so fortunate as his friend
Hogan, for he was convicted. He was sent into penal servitude on April
15th, 1869, but, being in delicate health, did not long survive, for he
died in Portland Prison on June 28th of the following year. William
H