After night-fall we descended, and slept at a farmer’s house at the southern base of the mountain, where we were most kindly entertained and sedulously guarded.  We there heard of the Ballingarry disaster.  Next morning we once more ascended Slievenamon, where we endeavoured to dissipate the heavy hours and the still heavier consciousness at our own hearts by firing at a mark.  The day suddenly darkened, and we had to seek shelter under rocks from a pitiless mountain shower.  We had dispatched a messenger to O’Mahony to demand an interview that evening; and, after he had returned, we were invited to partake of some new potatoes (then beginning to exhibit the blight), milk, eggs and butter.  I remember lying down in a bed, and getting so feverish that I believed my doom was sealed.  My noble young friend sat at my bedside, with a rifle and two pistols, prepared to defend my rest with his life.  The illness was, however, but trifling and temporary, and the necessity of acting enabled me at once to shake it off.  After nightfall, we proceeded to the appointed interview.  We travelled in a common car, accompanied by four others, all armed.  Our haunt was a poor cabin on the roadside, near a place called Moloch, in the neighbourhood of Carrick.  There I bid my faithful young friend good night, but was doomed not to see him afterwards.  Mr. O’Mahony and myself slept on some straw, but we had scarcely closed our eyes when we learned that the cabin was surrounded by the military and police.  We were apprised of our perilous position just in time to escape:  this we effected, after a struggle, aided by extreme darkness.  We spent the remainder of the night in a field, where I slept very soundly.  At break of day we retired to a farmer’s house near the Suir, where, after partaking of some refreshments, we went to bed, and slept, one or two hours.  The breakfast scene of that morning is not easily forgotten.  Perhaps there is no place in the world where a more substantial breakfast can be produced than at a comfortable Irish farmer’s.  On this occasion the silent, watchful, anxious grace of our young hostess, in her attentions, enhanced the flavour of the repast.  It is only by those who have partaken of such hospitality that the speechless tenderness of the females among that class of farmers can be appreciated.  But on the occasion to which I refer, there was added to the customary delicacy a deep anxiety for our fate.  Save hushed words of pressing and eloquent looks of sympathy, the meal passed off without conversation; and we rose from the table to depart, as if conscious we had exchanged our last earthly greeting.  It was not so, however, and our hostess shared much of our after fortune, and now shares our exile.  Her fate, too, is harder than ours.  We are occasionally cheered by public approval, by the sympathy and admiration of every lover of liberty, whereas her name is never spoken.  She has fallen from a position of comparative affluence, lost her independence (I use the word in its practical worldly sense), and is doomed to toil for her daily bread.  Of all the vicissitudes of fortune in which the attempt of which I write resulted, there is not one that has given me more pain than that of Margaret Quinlan, the lady (who has higher claims to that title?) to whom I have alluded.