Uprose the sun, and uprose Doolan and Redding, and dressed, and thrust each his sufficient iron poker up the sleeve of his blouse, and went forth.  They took up their station on a temporary wooden bridge which spanned the line, and waited there.  Across the bridge, as was expected, did Green ultimately come.  He gave them good morning; asked, “why they were loafing about?” received no very pertinent answer, perhaps did not care to receive one; whistled—­the unsuspecting man!—­thrust his hands into his breeches pockets, turned his back on them, and leaned over the railing of the bridge, inspecting the progress of the works beneath.  The temptation was really too great.  What could wild Irish flesh and blood do?  In a moment out from the sleeve of Doolan’s blouse came the hidden poker, and the first blow was struck, bringing Green to the ground.  The friendly Redding, who had bargained for the second, and who, naturally enough, was in fear of being cut out altogether, jumped on the prostrate man, and fulfilled his share of the bargain with a will.  It was Redding it was supposed who sped the unhappy Green.  They overdid their work—­like young authors—­giving many more blows than were sufficient, and then fled.  The works, of course, were that morning in consternation.  Redding and Hickie were, if I remember rightly, apprehended in the course of the day.  Doolan got off, leaving no trace of his whereabouts.

These particulars were all learned subsequently.  The first intimation which we schoolboys received of anything unusual having occurred, was the sight of a detachment of soldiers with fixed bayonets, trousers rolled up over muddy boots, marching past the front of the Cathedral hurriedly home to barracks.  This was a circumstance somewhat unusual.  We had, of course, frequently seen a couple of soldiers trudging along with sloped muskets, and that cruel glitter of steel which no one of us could look upon quite unmoved; but in such cases, the deserter walking between them in his shirt-sleeves, his pinioned hands covered from public gaze by the loose folds of his great-coat, explained everything.  But from the hurried march of these mud-splashed men, nothing could be gathered, and we were left to speculate upon its meaning.  Gradually, however, before the evening fell, the rumour of a murder having been committed spread through the city, and with that I instinctively connected the apparition of the file of muddy soldiers.  Next day, murder was in every mouth.  My school-fellows talked of it to the detriment of their lessons; it flavoured the tobacco of the fustian artisan as he smoked to work after breakfast; it walked on ’Change amongst the merchants.  It was known that two of the persons implicated had been captured, but that the other, and guiltiest, was still at large; and in a few days out on every piece of boarding and blank wall came the “Hue and cry”—­describing Doolan like a photograph, to the colour and cut of