Hogan’s counsel produced a similar revolver, and asked the witness if he could identify it as his manufacture?  The witness unhesitatingly did so.  The counsel, when his turn came, called another witness—­a decent-looking man of the artizan class.  The barrister handed him the revolver.

“Do you recognise it?” he asked.

“I do—­I made it myself.”

The Court was astonished.  The prosecuting counsel asked:—­

“How do you know it is yours?”

“By certain marks on it,” the man replied, and these he proceeded to describe.  As the description was found to be correct, and as the other witness, who had sworn that he had made the weapon, had not described any such marks, the case against Hogan broke down, and he was acquitted.

A few days afterwards he called on me, and explained how the thing had happened.  When he was arrested, his friends in Birmingham, having still on hand some of the revolvers he had purchased, had an exact copy of one of them made by a gunsmith whom they could trust, with instructions to put his own private marks upon it, which he could afterwards identify.  It was this weapon that had deceived the witness for the prosecution to such an extent that he wrongly swore to it as being his own manufacture.

Daniel Darragh, who was also put upon his trial for supplying the weapons for the Manchester Rescue, was not so fortunate as his friend Hogan, for he was convicted.  He was sent into penal servitude on April 15th, 1869, but, being in delicate health, did not long survive, for he died in Portland Prison on June 28th of the following year.  William Hogan, as the fulfilment of a sacred duty, brought the body of his friend home to Ireland, to be buried among his own kith and kin, in the Catholic cemetery of Ballycastle, Co.  Antrim; and Edward O’Meagher Condon, when recently visiting this country, considered it a no less sacred duty to visit the grave.

It will be seen that William Hogan, with all his acuteness, had a very narrow escape from falling into the hands of the law and suffering its penalties.  Still, it has been my experience, that men like him, who have stood their ground, following their usual legitimate occupations, were always less liable to be molested than what might be termed birds of passage, such as Rickard Burke, Arthur Forrester, or Michael Davitt.

Such, I consider, was the case of my friend, John Barry, when he was a resident in Newcastle-on-Tyne, in connection with an incident which he related to me a short time since.  Some arms were addressed to him “to be called for,” under the name of “Kershaw,” a well-known north-country name, not at all likely to be borne by an Irishman.  By some means the police got wind of the nature of the consignment, and the arms were held at the station, waiting for Mr. Kershaw to claim them.  But it was a case of plot and counterplot; and when John was actually on the way to the railway station, he was warned in time by a railway employe, an Irish Protestant member of the I.R.B., and did not finish his journey.  As “Kershaw” did not turn up, the case of arms was sent off to London to be produced at a trial then impending.