Before we parted, he arranged with me for my acting in Liverpool as a medium of communication in the organisation.  In this way I was, for several years, brought into constant contact with the leaders, nearly all of whom I met from time to time.

I think the most capable Irishmen I ever met were the various members of the Breslin family, with several of whom I was intimately acquainted.  Bravest among the brave, as they proved themselves at many a critical moment, there were none more prudent.  John Breslin was hospital steward in Richmond Prison when James Stephens, the Fenian chief, was imprisoned there awaiting his trial.

John Devoy was the man who successfully carried through, under the direction of Colonel Kelly, the outside arrangements in connection with the escape of the C.O.I.R. (Chief Organiser of the Irish Republic), as he was called, in the early morning of the 24th of November, 1865.

But John Breslin it was who, with the assistance of Daniel Byrne, night watchman, actually set Stephens free.  Byrne was arrested and put upon his trial for aiding the escape of Stephens, but nothing could be brought home to him, and, after two successive juries had disagreed on his case, he was released.  Breslin, the chief instrument in the rescue, was not suspected.  He simply bided his time until he took his annual holiday, from which he never returned, leaving the country before there was any suspicion of him.  Michael Breslin, his brother, held a responsible position in the Dublin police, and was the means of frustrating many a well-laid scheme of the Castle, so that if the Government had its creatures in the revolutionary camp, the I.R.B. had agents in theirs.

Another, as I have already mentioned, who took part in the Stephens rescue was my friend John Ryan, better known in the Brotherhood as Captain O’Doherty.  At our interview in Liverpool on the occasion of my initiation, he gave me a full account of this among other incidents.  He was, like Peter Maughan, an old schoolfellow of mine with the Christian Brothers in Liverpool.  He was one of the men picked out by Colonel Kelly to be on guard when the “old man”—­one of Stephens’ pet nick-names—­came over the prison wall.  Ryan was a fine type of an Irishman, morally, intellectually and physically.  As Stephens slipped down from the wall, holding on to the rope, he came with such force on my friend’s shoulders as almost to bear him to the ground.  In my “Irish in Britain” I have described in detail how Breslin got a key made for Stephens’ cell, and how he and Byrne helped the C.O.I.R. over the prison wall to where his friends awaited him, and also the adventures of the Fenian leader after his escape from Richmond.

The man who made the key for Stephens’ cell, from a mould taken by John Breslin, was Michael Lambert, a trusted member of the I.R.B.  Though his name was well known to the initiated at the time, it never was mentioned until later years, he being always referred to previously as “the optician.”