or his associates few of them had heard up to their appearance at Ballingarry; but they knew that it was against the forces of the British government and on behalf of Ireland’s independence they were called on to fight, and in this cause they were ready to shed their blood.  Such was the party whom O’Brien gazed upon with a troubled mind on that eventful day.  Even the attached companions who had so far attended him were no longer by his side; M’Manus, O’Donoghue, and Stephens were still there; but Meagher, Dillon, Doheny and O’Gorman had left at break of day to raise the standard of insurrection in other quarters.  Of the men around him not more than twenty possessed firearms, about twice that number were armed with pikes and pitchforks; the remainder had but their naked hands and the stones they could gather by the wayside.

On the other side were forty-seven disciplined men splendidly armed, and ensconced moreover in a building possessing for the purpose of the hour the strength of a fortress.  It stood on the brow of a hill overlooking the country in every direction; it consisted of two storeys with four windows in each, in front and rere; each gable being also pierced by a pair of windows.  There were six little children in the house when the police entered it.  Their mother, the Widow M’Cormick arrived on the spot immediately after the police had taken possession of her domicile, and addressing O’Brien she besought him to save her little ones from danger.  On O’Brien’s chivalrous nature the appeal was not wasted.  Heedless of the danger to which he exposed himself he walked up to the window of the house.  Standing at the open window with his breast within an inch of the bayonets of the two policemen who were on the inside, he called on them to give up their arms, and avoid a useless effusion of blood.  “We are all Irishmen, boys” he said, “I only want your arms and I’ll protect your lives.”  The reply was a murderous volley poured on the gathering outside.  Some half drunken person in the crowd it appears had flung a stone at one of the windows, and the police needed no further provocation.  The fire was returned by the insurgents, and O’Brien seeing that his efforts to preserve peace were futile, quitted the window and rejoined his companions.  For nearly two hours the firing continued; the police well sheltered from the possibility of injury fired in all about 220 rounds, killing two men and wounding a number of others, amongst them James Stephens who was shot in the thigh.  Long before an equal number of shots were fired from without, the ammunition of the insurgents was exhausted, and they could only reply to the thick falling bullets with the stones which the women present gathered for them in their aprons.  It was clear that the house could not be stormed in this way; and M’Manus, with half-a-dozen resolute companions, rolled a cartload of hay up to the kitchen door with the intention of setting fire to it and burning down the house.  But O’Brien would