l paper, precisely similar to dozens of other official papers
lying about the room.

"It is the Cork murder case, sir," he said in his everyday voice. "The
sentence has to be confirmed by you."

"A bad business, Dillon," said my father. "I have seen the Chief
Justice about it twice, and I have consulted the Judge who tried the
case, and the Solicitor and the Attorney-General. I am afraid that
there are no mitigating circumstances whatever. I shall certainly
confirm it," and he wrote across the official paper, "Let the law take
its course," and appended his signature, and that was all!

Could anything be more prosaic? What a waste of an unrivalled dramatic
situation.

When I returned home for the Christmas holidays in 1866, the Fenian
rebellion had already broken out. The authorities had reason to believe
that the Vice-regal Lodge would be attacked, and various precautions
had been taken. Both guards and sentries were doubled; four light
field-guns stood in the garden, and a row of gas-lamps had been
installed there. Stands of arms made their appearance in the passages
upstairs, which were patrolled all night by constables in rubber-soled
boots, but the culminating joy to my brother and me lay in the four
loopholes with which the walls of the bed-room we jointly occupied were
pierced. The room projected beyond the front of the main building, and
was accordingly a strategic point, but to have four real loopholes,
closed with wooden shutters, in the walls of our own bedroom was to the
two small urchins a source of immense pride. The boys at school were
hideously jealous of our loopholes when they heard of them, though they
affected to despise any one who, enjoying such undreamed-of
opportunities, had, on his own confession, failed to take advantage of
them, and had never even fired through the loopholes, nor attempted to
kill any one through them.

The Fenians were supposed to have the secret of a mysterious
combustible known as "Greek Fire" which was unquenchable by water. I
think that "Greek Fire" was nothing more or less than ordinary
petroleum, which was practically unknown in Europe in 1866, though from
personal experience I can say that it was well known in 1868, in which
year my mother, three sisters, two brothers and myself narrowly escaped
being burnt to death, when the Irish mail, in which we were travelling,
collided with a goods train loaded with petroleum at Abergele, North
Wales, an accident which resul