"Remember, boys, who hung Tierney, Coulan,
and Shanley; we must show no mercy to them
who showed none." Then there rolls along a
ground-swell of deep curses and execrations in
Irish, as Devan waves the turf torch, that glows
scarlet in the wind.

In the mean time, other bands are converging
to the same spot. A party of men, with
guns, pistols, and loaded sticks, have come
from the cross-roads of Correcklick, where
others have joined them; again, at the cross-roads
of Ballynavorneen, others have come riding
up smiling and shouting; at the cross-roads of
Dumbride there have also been recruits; and
even at Churchtown there was one armed man
waiting. At Churchtown, the men on foot,
knowing the country every "shap" and dyke,
leap away to Reaghstown Chapel, the near way
across the fields, but the horsemen (many riding
double) ride to Reaghstown by the road to
Tullykeel.

There are near upon a hundred now; savage-
looking fellows, many of them with bad foreheads,
high cheek-bones, and coarse cruel mouths, ready
for any crime. They are near the place of
action; at Arthurstown Chapel more whisky is
produced; they madden themselves with drink;
for there is work to do, and there may be fighting,
if the dragoons come down on them. The
fierce fellow who leads the Reaghstown detachment
boasts that he has a party that can be
relied on, and he goes to Campbell, who brought
up the men from Dumbride, and, flourishing a
pistol, swears that if any of either party flinch
he will blow their brains out.

Beyond Reaghstown Chapel the country gets
very wild, and there is one narrow swampy lane
which horses can hardly traverse. There is one
small farm-house on a piece of rising land; at this
season almost surrounded by water, it is only
approachable (except in a boat) by the narrow pass
leading from the south side of Reaghstown
Chapel lane. The bog is a wild mournful
desolate place, much like any other of the five
million acres of bog that give a mournful
monotonous character to Irish scenery; wide
tussocky tracks, untouched since the Deluge,
great thorny lumps of furze, tangled nets of
bramble, giant hillocks of rush, tufts of coarse
dead grass, acres of heather; deep trenches are
cut in the madder-coloured peat earth for drainage,
from which the snipe darts and zig-zags when
you approach; little black peat-stacks; these form
the only landmarks to break the melancholy level,
or here and there a little heap of coarse reedy
grass; everywhere, by the dark chocolate
slices dug but yesterday, or the dustier and
more friable sections of the older workings,
the wild cotton scatters its delusive little tufts
of snowy filament, with which the wild duck
will line its random nest. In the prairies, in
the virgin forests, in the jungle, among the
icebergs, between the glaciers, there is nothing so
desolate and repulsive as an Irish bog, though
beneath it lies the inexhaustible wealth of a soil
whose riches have been accumulating since the
Flood, and which needs only the magic touch of
Hope and Industry to spring and blossom into
plenty.

Such spots, colonised by needy, energetic, and
venturous men, are dreary enough, even under a
bright sun and pure sky; but in autumn, on a
howling restless night, they are perfectly
purgatorial in their dismal and deserted barrenness;
they seem the end of the world, and outside
all civilisation. Such may have been the aspect
of the earth when the dragon lizards, those
disbelievers in progress, dominated alone, and
trampled as conquerors over their muddy
dominion.

In the lane leading to this bog stood a
labourer's house.

A man named Pat Halfpenny and his wife
live there. They are sitting by the fire talking
over the events of the day, and listening
to the wind that, swelling and raging, then
wearing down to a tired lull, seems all at once
to give birth to strange sounds like the voices
of advancing men and the trampling and splashing
of horses' feet. The wife clings to her
husband; they tremble; for the fear of death is upon
them, and their hearts beat so loud that they can
hear the beating almost as clearly as that of the
clock which ticks on the wall. A moment after,
there comes an imperative tap at the door—the
knock of men who will force their way in if
they are not instantly admitted. Two stern
men, one of them with a gun, enter, the
moment the door is tremblingly opened; without
speaking, they go up to the hearth; taking a
little pot, they put three or four red-hot peats in
it, and are about to go off with them. The
poor woman falls on her knees, clasps her
hands, and prays them not to take the fire
away at such an hour. She does not know what
it is for, but she suspects some horrible revenge.
The men push her away angrily. The one with
the gun says to Halfpenny:

"If we hear a word from you or your wife,
we'll drag you out; if you dare to look after us,
you spalpeen, I'll blow the shot in this gun
through you."

They then leave a sentry at the door, and go
on towards Lynch's, another house further on.
Halfpenny, listening in intense fear, presently
hears a clamour of talking, shouting, and
mustering, and then the tramp of horses.

When the sound has gone by, and Halfpenny
thinks all is safe, and opens his door to go and
call his neighbour, Carrol, he hears a fierce voice
in the darkness that tells him to shut the door or
he will be shot.

There is no disguise now about the Ribbonmen's
intention. They are going to attack a lone
house, called Wildgoose Lodge, inhabited by a
farmer named Edward Lynch, who at the last
Louth summer assizes prosecuted the three
Ribbonmen, Tierney, Coulan, and Shanley, for
breaking into his house to obtain arms. The
resistance had been desperate. The prisoners
were unmistakably identified, and were convicted
and executed at Dundalk, to the open horror
and indignation of the Ribbon societies. Lynch' s
son-in-law, Thomas Rooney, and a labouring