“Hurrah, Dan!  More power to you!  Three cheers for the traversers, and Repale for ever!  Success to every mother’s son of you, my darlings!  You’ll be free yet, in spite of John Jason Rigby and the rest of ’em!  The prison isn’t yet built that’d hould ye, nor won’t be!  Long life to you, Sheil—­sure you’re a Right Honourable Repaler now, in spite of Greenwich Hospital and the Board of Trade!  More power, Gavan Duffy; you’re the boy that’ll settle ’em at last!  Three cheers more for the Lord Mayor, God bless him!  Well, yer reverence, Mr Tierney!—­never mind, they could come to no good when they’d be parsecuting the likes of you!  Bravo, Tom—­Hurrah for Tom Steele!”

Such, and such like, were the exclamations which greeted the traversers, and their cortege, as they drew up to the front of the Four Courts.  Dan O’Connell was in the Lord Mayor’s state carriage, accompanied by that high official; and came up to stand his trial for conspiracy and sedition, in just such a manner as he might be presumed to proceed to take the chair at some popular municipal assembly; and this was just the thing qualified to please those who were on his own side, and mortify the feelings of the party so bitterly opposed to him.  There was a bravado in it, and an apparent contempt, not of the law so much as of the existing authorities of the law, which was well qualified to have this double effect.

And now the outer doors of the Court were opened, and the crowd—­at least as many as were able to effect an entrance—­rushed in.  Martin and John Kelly were among those nearest to the door, and, in reward of their long patience, got sufficiently into the body of the Court to be in a position to see, when standing on tiptoe, the noses of three of the four judges, and the wigs of four of the numerous counsel employed.  The Court was so filled by those who had a place there by right, or influence enough to assume that they had so, that it was impossible to obtain a more favourable situation.  But this of itself was a great deal—­quite sufficient to justify Martin in detailing to his Connaught friends every particular of the whole trial.  They would probably be able to hear everything; they could positively see three of the judges, and if those two big policemen, with high hats, could by any possibility be got to remove themselves, it was very probable that they would be able to see Sheil’s back, when he stood up.

John soon began to show off his forensic knowledge.  He gave a near guess at the names of the four counsel whose heads were visible, merely from the different shades and shapes of their wigs.  Then he particularised the inferior angels of that busy Elysium.

“That’s Ford—­that’s Gartlan—­that’s Peirce Mahony,” he exclaimed, as the different attorneys for the traversers, furiously busy with their huge bags, fidgetted about rapidly, or stood up in their seats, telegraphing others in different parts of the Court.