Time, however, passes, and the assizes were at hand, a fearful Avatar of judicial power to the guilty.  The struggle between the parties who were interested in the fate of Whitecraft, and those who felt the extent of his unparalleled guilt, and the necessity not merely of making him an example but of punishing him for his enormous crimes, was dreadful.  The infatuation of political rancor on one side, an infatuation which could perceive nothing but the virtue of high and resolute Protestantism in his conduct, blinded his supporters to the enormity of his conduct, and, as a matter of course, they left no stone unturned to save his life.  As we said, however, they were outnumbered; but still they did not despair.  Reilly’s friends had been early in the legal market, and succeeded in retaining some of the ablest men at the bar, his leading counsel being the celebrated advocate Fox, who was at that time one of the most distinguished men at the Irish bar.  Helen, as the assizes approached, broke down so completely in her health that it was felt, if she remained in that state, that she would be unable to attend; and although Reilly’s trial was first on the list, his opposing counsel succeeded in getting it postponed for a day or two in order that an important witness, then ill, he said, might be able to appear on their part.

It is not our intention to go through the details of the trial of the Red Rapparee.  The evidence of Mary Mahon, Fergus O’Reilly, and the sheriff, was complete; the chain was unbroken; the change of apparel—­the dialogue in Mary Mahon’s cabin, in which he; avowed the fact of his having robbed the sheriff—­the identification of his person by the said sheriff in the farmer’s house, as before stated, left nothing for the jury to do I but to bring in a verdict of guilty.  Mercy was out of the question.  The hardened ruffian—­the treacherous ruffian—­who had lent himself to the bloodthirsty schemes of Whitecraft—­and all this came out upon his trial, not certainly to the advantage of the baronet—­this hardened and treacherous ruffian, we say, who had been a scourge to that part of the country for years, now felt, when the verdict of guilty was brought in against him, just as a smith’s anvil might feel when struck by a feather.  On hearing it, he growled a hideous laugh, and exclaimed: 

“To the divil I pitch you all; I wish, though, that I had Tom Bradley, the prophecy man, here, who tould me that I’d never be hanged, and that the rope was never born for me.”

“If the rope was not born for you,” observed the judge, “I fear I shall be obliged to inform you that you were born for the rope.  Your life has been an outrage,upon civilized society.”