mention of the local corps, and proposed a walk towards the drill-shed.  This was a barn, very roughly adapted to military purposes, and standing, remote from houses, in a field at Roxeth, a hamlet of Harrow on the way to Northolt.  It served both for drill-shed and for armoury, and, as the local corps (the 18th Middlesex) was a large one, it contained a good supply of arms and ammunition.  The custodian, who lived in a cottage at Roxeth, was a Crimean veteran, who kept everything in apple-pie order, and on this Saturday afternoon was just putting the finishing touches of tidiness to the properties in his charge.  Mr. Aulif made friends with him at once, spoke enthusiastically of the Crimea, talked of improvements in guns and gunnery since those days, praised the Anglo-French alliance, and said how sad it was that England now had to be on her guard against her former allies across the Channel.  As the discourse proceeded, I began to question my theory that Aulif was an actor.  Perhaps he was a soldier.  Could he be a Jesuit in disguise?  Jesuits were clean-shaved and well-informed.  Or was it only his faculty of general agreeableness that enabled him to attract the old caretaker at the drill-shed as he had attracted the schoolboy in the train?  As we walked back to the station, my desire to know what my friend really was increased momentarily, but I no more dared to ask him than I should have dared to shake hands with Queen Victoria; for, to say the truth, Mr. Aulif, while he fascinated, awed me.  He told me that he was just going abroad, and we parted at the station with mutual regrets.

* * * * *

The year 1867 was conspicuously a year of Fenian activity.  The termination of the Civil War in America had thrown out of employment a great many seasoned soldiers of various nationalities, who had served for five years in the American armies.  Among these were General Cluseret, educated at Saint-Cyr, trained by Garibaldi, and by some good critics esteemed “the most consummate soldier of the day.”  The Fenians now began to dream not merely of isolated outrages, but of an armed rising in Ireland; and, after consultation with the Fenian leaders in New York, Cluseret came to England with a view to organizing the insurrection.  What then befell can be read in Lathair, where Cluseret is thinly disguised as “Captain Bruges,” and also in his own narrative, published in Fraser’s Magazine for 1872.  He arrived in London in January, 1867, and startling events began to happen in quick succession.  On the 11th of February an armed party of Fenians attacked Chester Castle, and were not repulsed without some difficulty.  There was an armed rising at Killarney.  The police-barracks at Tallaght were besieged, and at Glencullen the insurgents captured the police-force and their weapons.  At Kilmallock there was an encounter between the Fenians and the constabulary, and life was lost on both sides.  There was a design of concentrating all the Fenian