At the Hibernia Hotel, where I stopped as Mr. Kelly (my travelling baptism), I saw for the first time in ten days the Irish papers.  The Dublin Freeman and Saunder’s News Letter were on the table.  I read the list of the places where, and the clergymen by whom, the Southern movement had been “denounced,” on Sunday, July 23rd and Sunday, July 30th.  The same papers contained Lord Clarendon’s wily letter to Archbishop Murray, offering to alter the statutes of the new colleges and to remodel the Bequests Bill so as to content the Catholic clergy, and artfully complimenting Pius IX.  The game of the Government was clear—­it was to separate the clergy from the people in the coming struggle.

The evening of my arrival in Sligo, I conferred with a few friends.  The place chosen was “a shell house” in the demesne of Hazelwood on the shores of Lough Gill.  Of those[D] who formed that conference one at least, Mr. William M’Garahan, is now in America.  We ascertained the garrison of Sligo to be but ninety men—­the barrack to be surrounded by a common eight-foot wall, and the local authorities to be completely lulled to sleep.  The circumstances were as favourable as could be expected.

But there never had been in Sligo or Leitrim any local Confederate or even “Repeal” organisation.  The only local societies were secret—­Molly Maguires and Ribbonmen.  It was necessary to get into communication with them and late the next night Dr. ——­, a Confederate, introduced me to one of their leaders, on a road which crosses a hill to the south of the town.  This gentleman I found wary, resolute, and intelligent.  He said:  “I have no doubt of what you say, but I must have certain facts to lay before our district chiefs.  At present we don’t know what to believe.  One day we hear one thing—­another, another.  Bring us by this day week assurances that the South is going to rise or has risen, and we will raise two thousand before the week is out.”  I agreed to do so and he in the meantime went to prepare his friends.

I returned to my confidants of the first conference and “reported progress.”  It was rather difficult to find a trusty messenger.  I volunteered to go myself, but they would not hear of it.  At last a man who could be depended on was obtained, and, armed with certain passwords (unintelligible except to those for whom they were intended) he left to go through Roscommon and Westmeath into Tipperary by Borrisokane and Nenagh.

Simultaneously with this, agents went abroad in the country, and I, by the advice of the local leaders, went to lodge under Benbulben in the character of a Dublin student in search of health and exercise during the summer vacation.  Within a week we expected to be openly arrayed against the authorities, and no man that I saw shrank from the prospect.

From my lodgings under Benbulben I made a visit to Bundoran to meet some friends from Donegal who were anxious to consult me as to the state of the county.  By an odd chance I lodged in the same house with the stipendiary magistrate, Sir Thomas Blake, and had to go through his bedroom to my own.  We met frequently but he was quite unsuspicious.  He has, I find since, been dismissed from his office, after an ineffectual search for me through the county, a month from the time we had lived under the same roof.