held at arm's length. Mother was stooping over him-her hand was laid on his arm. I heard her say "Will you not think once more. Oh Derrick! why not let her read it ?” But the look of sternness did not relax-the turf flame sprang up greedily-the hand with the prize on which I set so unspeakable a value was thrust out "Oh give me my letter!" I entreated; "Oh father spare it-let me read it once! let me have my letter!" Father took my eager out-stretched hand in one of his which was free-he held it with kindly pitying touch; "I have spoken once," he said his voice was firm, his purpose unfaltering. Geraldine entered the room only in time to see the flash of a forked flame flare up a moment, curl cruelly round some frail scorched paper, burn it into blackened ashes and die down again. June 8th.-The cause of liberty has lost its leader. Lord Edward Fitzgerald is dead! He on whom the country hung her hopes— he to whom the people looked to deliver them-he who would have saved Ireland if he could he is dead-cut off at the beginning of the struggle-he has died for Ireland's sake, but not on the field of victory, only as a condemned prisoner within prison walls. Geraldine and I think it hard and cruel of those in authority to have refused permission to his brother and sister to see him until the last. This afternoon I walked with father in the direction of Ballycarrig; we spoke littlewe passed Lawrence Lalor working at his forge. The furnace was burning fiercely: the red-hot sparks were flying everywhere: the fire seemed to have taken hold of the strong swarthy smith himself; each stroke of his hammer rang down swiftly and strongly with a sort of bold defiance, and as he worked he sang. How sadly mocking the words sounded Where shall we pitch our camp, Says the Shan van Voght, On the Curragh of Kildare, He looked up as father approached, but did not return the recognition; there was a strange glow in his eyes. The song rose recklessly Lord Edward will be there, Are your pikes in good repair ? "Lord Edward Fitzgerald is dead," said my father abruptly. The hammer stayed suspended midway in its great sweep; the man glared fiercely. "Dead?" he thundered, "dead? Is that truth ?" Father handed him his newspaper, where a paragraph printed in large, clear letters, announced the event. Down swooped the hammer, while a bitter curse rose above its reverberation. "One more wrong to revenge! One more reckoned among the dead! What matter? -there will be others going before long I am thinking! that can never be forgotten. far off when the poor will remember." the same way There are things The day is not make the rich Lawrence went on talking to himself in threatening mutters, which would have been audible enough, had we not turned silently a way. CHAPTER IX. August 1st.-Week after week has gone by, and I have written nothing. How could I write when all has been so dark and sad? I am I should never make a historian. ashamed to think how I could ever have started a diary with such an idea. Each mail that reaches us, brings tidings of fresh horrors of victory sometimes on the side of the people-other times on the side of the royalists—often of wicked, heartless cruelty on both sides-of battles and bloodshed and sickening details: the blackest tales of all have come from the county of Wexford. I dare not trust myself to speak of the awful massacre at Scullabogue, where the barn in which over two hundred prisoners had been confined, was ordered to be set on fire, and where by flame, and pike, and firearms, so many were put to death. But it has haunted me day and night, and often still there comes back to me the image of the little child, who hurt and bruised, had struggled under the door, but who was not suffered to escape, but caught on the end of a pike and flung back into the flames. Again and again I have tried to withdraw my thoughts from the fearful scenes which have been happening each day, which, to us in these far off parts, have passed so quietly; again and again my thoughts have turned back to the camp at Vinegar Hill, to the battles of Ross, of Gorey, and of Arklow, and I have seized the papers tremblingly to scan the lists of the "killed and wounded." For over, and under, and above, and beneath all else comes the remembrance that there is a life which is precious to me on either side to be lost or saved. Roderick writes when he can, but that is very rarely-his letters seem to me to be more an effort to write as brightly as possible than from any real cause for brightness-and even when he alludes hopefully to the defeat of "the rebels" (as he always names them) at Vinegar Hill, one can read between the lines the sadness which must underlie each victory as well as each defeat. In his last letter he told us of a little |