for the pursuit, momentarily checked his turbulent fury. Now, he did not hesitate an instant in taking the only measures—though insanity itself might have hesitated in taking them—which his wild passions suggested. He sought his horse. The poor tired animal had found his unassisted way to a stable, and was eagerly snatching a mouthful of food. He dragged it from this needful indulgence, mounted, and again forcing his way through the rushing crowds of insurgents, and over the trampled bodies of slain, and through the yet flaming suburb, galloped towards Wexford.

But ere he had quite cleared the crowded streets of Enniscorthy, he became confusedly aware, from the explanatory clamour on every side, of the meaning of the continued shout which had attracted the notice and roused the curiosity of the first persons he had encountered at the inn. It was the expression of an agreement, on the part of the greater body of the victors, to evacuate the town, and take up their position on the rocky eminence above it, subsequently distinguished as the scene of Murtoch Kane's massacres, and those of other insurgents, who, remaining there, either in cowardice, or for the satiation of highly excited revenge, per

petrated cruelties for which the mass of the peasant-army were not accountable. The reasons urged by the leaders to the licentious mob for thus abandoning the conquered town were strong; the danger, namely, that a greater force than they had yet encountered might march upon Enniscorthy, and surprise them in the midst of their riot and disorder; yet (and Sir William, absorbed as he was by a private question, could not fail to notice the fact), it proved no easy matter finally to induce the victors to give up the scene, and the remaining spoils of their victory; and though at length the greater number yielded to the threats, the prayers, and the actual coercion of their nominal leaders, a sufficient body, acknowledging no command, remained behind to continue during the night the excesses begun in the heat of triumph.

The Baronet still pressed on his weary steed along the road to Wexford. We repeat, that even a madman might have shrunk from the course he was pursuing. Alone he approached a town in possession of the King's troops, and where a hundred eyes were ready to recognize him at a glance, as the rebel commander, Sir William Judkin. Yet it may be questioned

if he once weighed, or even thought of the risk he ran. One purpose mastered and filled his mind; one passion possessed him. To encounter Talbot, even if he could not meet his wife, to force from him an account of her situation, and then to strike him dead at his feet; this was all that the despairing lover, husband, and rival, now lived for. Could he but once work his vengeance, perhaps the thought of instant destruction to himself after it, called up, as he fiercely glanced over all the circumstances that surrounded him, only a grim smile upon the features of Sir William.

Within three miles of his destined goal, his horse sank exhausted. Revengefully spurning the gasping beast, he bounded on a-foot.

The town wall of Wexford was standing in full preservation, so that none could gain ingress save through the archways, in which massive gates once stood, and which, at his approach, the panic-struck garrison were hastily barricading and blocking up. At the gate he was instantly recognized and apprehended. The large pistol he had seized the night before was still in his breast; he prepared to use it, it was wrested from him, and his life had been forfeited on the spot, but

that the identical yeoman-captain he came to seek interfered to save him. Sir William struggled hard to leave the grasp of his captors and spring upon his rival; but Talbot coolly ordered him to be conveyed by main force to the prison of the town; and notwithstanding his continued resistance, in which he evinced the strength as well as the rage of a foaming madman, half-a-dozen of athletic yeomen dragged him through the streets, and with a brain on fire, and the blood boiling like melted ore through his veins, he was once more a captive, better secured than even in his last dungeon, under lock, bolt, bar, and a succession of formidable doors.

CHAPTER XII.

FROM many respectable fellow-prisoners, confined like himself, either upon the suspicion or the direct charge of disloyalty, Sir William, immediately on his entrance into the gaol, encountered anxious questions concerning the successes and plans of the insurrectionary force; but his fierce answers, or his sullen silence, yielded little information to the catechists, and only caused them to set him down for the maniac he was.

For some time, however, he naturally became alive to the subject which continued to be discussed around him. Whether or not the insurgents would advance upon Wexford, and whether or not they would prove as successful in that town as they had proved in Enniscorthy, now presented, in connexion with his private interests and fate, a most important question. As he had helped to burst the gate of Ennis