The two Fenian chiefs stayed with Condon that night, fighting their old campaigns over again, e’er they retired to rest, not to meet again till eleven years after the Manchester Rescue, when Condon and Burke came across each other in New York, each having suffered in the interval a long term of imprisonment, and it was the last night that Burke and Condon passed on earth with Michael O’Brien, whose memory Irishmen, the world over, honour as one of the “noble-hearted three”—­the Manchester Martyrs—­who died for Ireland on the scaffold.

The secret of the intended rescue was closely guarded, and though the Mayor of Manchester did get a warning wire from Dublin Castle, it reached too late, and the birds had flown.  When Kelly and Deasy were brought before the city magistrates they were remanded.  “They were,” said the “Daily News,” “placed in a cell with a view to removal to the city jail at Belle Vue.  At this time the police noticed outside the court house two men hanging about whom they suspected to be Fenians, and a policeman made a rush at one of them to arrest him, in which he succeeded, but not until the man had drawn a dagger and attempted to stab him, the blow being warded off.  The other made his escape.”

As to the incident just related, it seems that a patriotic but imprudent man belonging to one of the Manchester circles had got to hear of the intended rescue, and was indignant at being left out.  His suspicious conduct outside the court house drew the attention of the police—­as we have seen—­with the result, as the paper said, that the authorities became alarmed.  Kelly and Deasy were put in irons on their removal, and a strong body of police were sent with the van intended to take them to Belle Vue Prison.

It was the custom for a policeman to ride outside the van, on the step behind, but, on this occasion, owing to the incident just described, Brett, the officer in charge, went inside the van.  The door was then locked, and the keys handed to him through the ventilator.

It is certain that, up to this point, the Manchester police had no suspicion of the intended rescue, and it was only the imprudent behaviour of the man whom the police had arrested that caused additional precautions to be taken.  Certain it is that if the Manchester authorities had had any information of the probability of an attempted rescue there would have been a formidable escort of the police and military.

With so much false swearing at the trials with regard to the facts of the Manchester Rescue, it is important that the information given in books for the benefit of the present and future generations of Irishmen should be correct.  It is serious that in some of our best books so important a matter as the actual scene of the rescue is incorrectly given.  One book says:  “The van drove off for the County jail at Salford.”  In another description it is stated:  “Just as the van passed under