Scotch settlers over to his side.  Sidney however was this time in earnest, and was a man of very different calibre from Sussex, in whom Shane had previously found so easy an antagonist.  He marched right across Ulster, and entered Tyrconnel; reinstated the O’Donnells who had been driven thence by Shane; continued his march to Sligo, and from there to Connaught, leaving Colonel Randolph and the O’Donnells to hold the North and finish the work which he had begun.

Randolph’s camp was pitched at Dorry—­not then the protegee of London, nor yet famed in story, but a mere insignificant hamlet, consisting of an old castle and a disused graveyard.  It was this latter site that the unlucky English commander selected for his camp, with, as might be expected, the most disastrous results.  Fever broke out, the water proved to be poisonous, and in a short time half the force were dead or dying, Randolph himself being amongst the former.  An explosion which occurred in a magazine finished the disaster, and the scared survivors escaped in dismay to Carrickfergus.  Local superstition long told tales of the fiery portents and miracles by which the heretic soldiery were driven from the sacred precincts which their presence had polluted.

With that odd strain of greatness which ran through her, Elizabeth seems to have accepted this disaster well, and wrote “comfortable words” to Sidney upon the subject.  For the time being, however, the attack upon Shane devolved of necessity wholly upon his native foes.

Aided by good fortune they proved for once more than a match for him.  Encouraged by the disaster of the Derry garrison, Shane made a hasty advance into Tyrconnel, and crossed with a considerable force over the ford of Lough Swilly, near Letterkenny.  He found the O’Donnells, though fewer in number than his own forces, established in a strong position upon the other side.  From this position he tried to drive them by force, but the O’Donnells were prepared, and Shane’s troops coming on in disorder were beaten back upon the river.  The tide had in the meantime risen, and there was therefore no escape.  Penned between the flood and the O’Donnells, over 3000 of his men perished, many by drowning, but the greater number being hacked to death upon the strand.  Shane himself narrowly escaped with his life by another ford.

The Hero of the North was now a broken man.  Such a disaster was not to be retrieved.  The English troops were again coming rapidly up.  The victorious O’Donnells held all the country behind him.  A French descent, even if it had come, would hardly have saved him now.  In this extremity a desperate plan occurred to him.  Followed by a few horsemen, and accompanied by the unhappy “Countess” who had so long shared his curious fortunes, he rode off to the camp of the Scotch settlers in Antrim, there to throw himself on their mercy and implore their support.  It was an insane move.  He was received with seeming courtesy, and a banquet spread in his