“The Campsie Duke’s a-riding, a-riding, a-riding,”

being the oft-recurring “owercome,” or refrain.  All this is going on in the pleasant sunset light, when by the apparition of certain waggons coming up from the city, piled high with blocks and beams, and guarded by a dozen dragoons, on whose brazen helmets the sunset danced, every game is dismembered, and we are in a moment a mere mixed mob of boys and girls, flocking around to stare and wonder.  Just at this place something went wrong with one of the waggon wheels, and the procession came to a stop.  A crowd collected, and we heard some of the grown-up people say, that the scaffold was being carried out for the ceremony of to-morrow.  Then, more intensely than ever, one realised the condition of the doomed men. We were at our happy games in the sunset, they were entering on their last night on earth.  After hammering and delay the wheel was put to rights, the sunset died out, waggons and dragoons got into motion and disappeared; and all the night through, whether awake or asleep, I saw the torches burning, and heard the hammers clinking, and witnessed as clearly as if I had been an onlooker, the horrid structure rising, till it stood complete, with a huge cross-beam from which two empty halters hung, in the early morning light.

Next morning the whole city was in commotion.  Whether the authorities were apprehensive that a rescue would be attempted, or were anxious merely to strike terror into the hundreds of wild Irishry engaged on the railway, I cannot say:  in any case, there was a display of military force quite unusual.  The carriage in which the criminals—­Catholics both—­and their attendant priests were seated, was guarded by soldiers with fixed bayonets; indeed, the whole regiment then lying in the city was massed in front and behind, with a cold, frightful glitter of steel.  Besides the foot soldiers, there were dragoons, and two pieces of cannon; a whole little army, in fact.  With a slenderer force battles have been won which have made a mark in history.  What did the prisoners think of their strange importance, and of the tramp and hurly-burly all around?  When the procession moved out of the city, it seemed to draw with it almost the entire population; and when once the country roads were reached, the crowds spread over the fields on either side, ruthlessly treading down the tender wheat braird.  I got a glimpse of the doomed, blanched faces which had haunted me so long, at the turn of the road, where, for the first time, the black cross-beam with its empty halters first became visible to them.  Both turned and regarded it with a long, steady look; that done, they again bent their heads attentively to the words of the clergyman.  I suppose in that long, eager, fascinated gaze they practically died—­that for them death had no additional bitterness.  When the mound was reached on which the scaffold stood, there was immense confusion.  Around it