ll be ready behind the garden-hedge, to bear her
off to the mountains--they know themselves where. I will overteek them,
or perhaps be there by the upper road before them. If any of you has a
fancy for the other sister, I'm not the man that will stand in your way;
but in order to encourage you to do your dooty, I now decleer that it is
the man who will best distinguish himself among you that must get her.
You all know what you are to do. The old tyrant, root and branches, is
to be cut off, and his second daughter secured to me. You have been told
the password for the night, and if you find any men among you that knows
it not, put him instantly to death as a spy and a traitor. And now, my
brave fellows, every man to his post, and I, who am for this night at
least' your commander, will lead you on. Come, then, follow me, and
again I say--'Death and dark destruction to Matthew Purcel and his two
sons!'"

In a few minutes the vast multitude was in motion, all dressed in white
shirts and disguised by blackened faces. The were certainly a fierce
and formidable body, amounting, it is calculated, to not less than five
thousand men, collected, as it was well known, from the seven adjoining
counties.

The aspect of the sky, on this awful night, was long remembered by the
inhabitants of that part of the country. Over towards the west, and
away as far as the south, it seemed! to be one long mass of deep,
angry-looking fire, that seemed both frightful and portentous, and made
the spectator feel as if a general and immediate conflagration of the
heavens was about to take place: whilst stretched nearer in point of
space to the eye, were visible large bars of cloud that seemed, from
their crimson color, to be masses of actual blood. In fact, the whole
firmament was full of gloom and terror, and pregnant with such
an appalling spirit of coming storm as apparently to threaten the
destruction of the elements.

It was quite evident, from the disturbed and unsettled appearance of the
country for miles around, and from the circumstance of such an unusual
multitude being on foot in the course of the evening, that some deed of
more than ordinary importance or danger was to be done. The Purcel's,
ever on the watch, soon learned that they were to be attacked on that
very night by those who had threatened them so often, and to whom they
themselves had so frequently sent back a stern and fierce defiance.
Little had they calculated, however, tha