max;
he asked the murderous multitude to let him stop a few moments to
breathe--he then proceeds: 'I shall never forget that moment. I was
then about a mile from the town on the broad and open road leading to
Loughfea Castle. I turned and looked around me, thinking my last
hour was come, and anxious to see if there was one kind face, one
countenance, I had ever seen before, who could at least tell my
friends how I had died. But I looked in vain. The hills were crowded
with people. The long line of road was one mass of human beings,
whilst those immediately around me, mad with excitement, seemed only
to thirst for my blood.

'Having got a few moments' breathing-time, and seeing all appeal to
be vain, I turned again on my way, determined, however, to hold out
to the last, as I felt that to fall or to faint must be certain death.
Just then I became conscious of an able hand and a stout heart beside
me, and I heard a whisper in my ear: "They are determined to have your
blood, but hold up, they shall have mine first." The speaker grasped
my arm firmly under his own, and walked on steadily by my side.

'By this time I was _completely naked with the exception of my
trousers_. My coat, even my shirt, had been torn off, and I walked on,
still beaten and ill-treated, like a man to execution; my head bare,
and _without any clothes from my waist upwards_. To increase the
misery of my situation, I found that my friend had been beaten and
dragged away in spite of himself, and again I was left alone in the
hands of those merciless men. I felt also I could now go no further,
and that a last effort must be made before my senses left me from
exhaustion. Stopping therefore once more, I asked to be led towards a
high bank at the roadside, and leaning against this I turned and faced
those whom I now believed would soon become my murderers.

'"I can go no further," said I; "what have you brought me here for?
What do you want me to do?" Again the same voice which I had first
heard at the office, though I could not identify the speaker from the
shouting and confusion around me, cried aloud, "We want a reduction of
our rents, will you promise to get us that?"

'There are times of instant danger, when it is said that the whole of
a man's past life rushes before him in the spaces of a single moment.
If ever there be such a time, this was such to me. I stood there,
exhausted, without one friendly face on which to rest, and surrounded
by _the