to carry out his own purposes. He was tall and
well made, and in the vigour of life. His small
sleepy eyes, languid with watching, cast
sidelong insidious glances, like those of a cat,
and gave a forbidding look of distrust to his
physiognomy.

The bishop being a travelled man, spoke good
French, and General Humbert told him to be
under no apprehension. He and all his people
would be treated with respectful attention.
He even hoped a person of the ability and
consequence of the bishop would serve himself,
and help to liberate his country, by joining the
new Directorate. The main army, under General
Kilmaine, numbered ten thousand men, and
three thousand more on board ship were ready
at Brest, under General Hardy. Nothing but,
what was absolutely necessary for support was
to be taken by the French troops. The evening
was spent in giving hurried orders for the
disembarkation of the men, and making
arrangements for their quarters. The French
officers boasted, after their manner, that they
had brought arms for one hundred thousand
men and nine pieces of cannon. They had really
with them arms for only five thousand five
hundred men and two four-pounders.

That evening Humbert examined his prisoner,
Captain Kirkwood, as to what supplies could be
drawn from the town to assist the republicans
in their march forward. Mr. Kirkwood replied,
with such frankness and candour, that the
French general liberated him on parole. His
invalid wife, however, flying to the mountains,
Kirkwood broke his parole to join her, and,
after hiding for some days in the sea-coast
caves of Erris, obtained permission to return to
Killala, and found half the oats, salt, and iron in
his stores removed by the angry French, and his
dwelling-house almost a wreck.

The bishop's dining-room, on the evening of
the landing, half an hour before the scene of
tranquil festivity, was soon turned into a noisy
guard-room crowded with gesticulating French
soldiers dragging in leather valises and cases of
ammunition, and with prisoners being examined
by savage-looking republican officers, while in
one corner a surly-looking grenadier captain was
having a severe wound dressed by a surgeon
and his assistant. Three hundred soldiers swore
and chattered in the court-yard and offices.
Immediately on entering the dining-room, the
bishop's butler was called for, ordered to collect
all the plate and secure it in his pantry. Not an
article stolen, nor so much as a hat, whip, or
great-coat pilfered from the hall. The yeomanry
were locked in the drawing-room in'the middle
floor. Two bed-chambers adjoining were seized
for the general and his principal officers. The
attic story, a library, and three bedrooms were
reserved sacredly for the bishop and his family,
and only on one occasion did the officers ever
enter those rooms, and that occasion was the
evening the tidings reached the Breach of
their victory at Castlebar.

The bishop has left us a vivid picture (worthy
of Waverley) of the first night after the landing
of the French. "It is not easy," he says, "by
any force of language to convey an adequate
idea of the miseries of that first night which
succeeded to the landing of the enemy.
To the terrified imaginations of the town's
people the castle instantly presented itself as
the only place where they could have a chance
of safety. Thither accordingly they fled, without
distinction of age, sex, or condition, forcing
their way into every corner of the house and
offices, occupying the staircases, spreading
through the bed-chambers, and some of them
even thrusting themselves and their children
into the same beds with the infants of the
bishop's family. Women that had lain sick in
their beds for a month before, and one old lady
past eighty, who was bed-rid, and believed to
be at the point of death, gathering strength
from despair, contrived to work their way to
the very top of the house. Chairs were placed
round the lobby of the attic story, on which
the family, with some of their principal
acquaintance, remained without a thought of
repose for the whole night. Indeed the leaden
hand of sleep could not have closed any eye-
lids but those of an infant. The whole house
resounded like a bedlam with the loquacity of
the Frenchmen below, and the shrieks and
groans of the fugitives above. Among the last
there wanted not some, who sought consolation
from the whisky bottle, in consequence of which
they became presently so clamorous and
troublesome, that it was found necessary to
restrain them by force."

Two of the bishop's clerical guests had fled
on foot to the mountains on the first alarm,
leaving their horses to be seized by the French,
but the Dean of Kiilala brought his wife and
children for shelter to the castle; the Reverend
Robert Nixon, curate of the parish, and the
Reverend Mr Little, of Lachan, also sought
the same asylum with the bishop, his eleven
children, and his thirteen servants.

On the morning after his arrival, Humbert
pushed forward to Ballina a detachment of a
hundred men, forty of whom he mounted on the
best horses he could find in the country. He
concealed under the arch of a bridge near Killala
a sergeant's guard, to watch the enemy's recon-
noitrers. A shot from this ambuscade proved
fatal to a brave young clergyman, the Reverend
George Fortescue (nephew to Lord Clermont),
who had put himself at the head of a party of
observation from Balliua. That town at once
fell into the hands of the French, the carbineers,
the yeomanry—all but one fat lazy fellow, who
was caught in bed—taking to their heels with
great unanimity. Humbert returned to Killala
in triumph in poor Mr. Fortescue's two-horse
curricle, with the fat yeoman (looking like a
seal just awoke) by his side in full uniform.
Several hundreds of rebel peasants, recruits,
rent the air with their acclamations. A green
flag, with the inscription "Erin go Bragh," was
now mounted over the castle gate as a rallying
standard for the pikemen,to whom arms, clothing,
and ammunition were to be at once distributed.
Ready money would arrive in the very first
ships from France. In the mean time goods