t pink,
lingering in the tufts of foliage that nestle around the asylum, and
dipping the building itself one half in light, one half in tender
shade. This open space or square is an excellent place for the games
of us boys, and "Prisoner's Base" is being carried out with as much
earnestness as the business of life now by those of us who are left.
The girls, too, have their games of a quiet kind, which we held in huge
scorn and contempt. In two files, linked arm-in-arm, they alternately
dance towards each other and then retire, singing the while, in their
clear, girlish treble, verses, the meaning and pertinence of which time
has worn away--

"The Campsie Duke's a-riding, a-riding, a-riding,"

being the oft-recurring "owercome," or refrain. All this is going on
in the pleasant sunset light, when by the apparition of certain waggons
coming up from the city, piled high with blocks and beams, and guarded
by a dozen dragoons, on whose brazen helmets the sunset danced, every
game is dismembered, and we are in a moment a mere mixed mob of boys
and girls, flocking around to stare and wonder. Just at this place
something went wrong with one of the waggon wheels, and the procession
came to a stop. A crowd collected, and we heard some of the grown-up
people say, that the scaffold was being carried out for the ceremony of
to-morrow. Then, more intensely than ever, one realised the condition
of the doomed men. _We_ were at our happy games in the sunset, _they_
were entering on their last night on earth. After hammering and delay
the wheel was put to rights, the sunset died out, waggons and dragoons
got into motion and disappeared; and all the night through, whether
awake or asleep, I saw the torches burning, and heard the hammers
clinking, and witnessed as clearly as if I had been an onlooker, the
horrid structure rising, till it stood complete, with a huge cross-beam
from which two empty halters hung, in the early morning light.

Next morning the whole city was in commotion. Whether the authorities
were apprehensive that a rescue would be attempted, or were anxious
merely to strike terror into the hundreds of wild Irishry engaged on
the railway, I cannot say: in any case, there was a display of military
force quite unusual. The carriage in which the criminals--Catholics
both--and their attendant priests were seated, was guarded by soldiers
with fixed bayonets; indeed, the whole regiment then lying in the city
was mas