ion in the usual fashion, burning
villages, destroying the harvest, driving off cattle, blowing up
castles, and hanging their garrisons in strings over the battlements.
After which he marched to Connaught, leaving Sir Humphrey Gilbert behind
him to keep order in the south.

For more than two years Sir James Fitzmaurice continued to hold out in
his rocky fastness amongst the Galtese mountains. A sort of grim humour
pervades the relations between him and Sir John Perrot, the new
President of Munster. Perrot had boasted upon his arrival that he would
soon "hunt that fox out of his hole." The fox, however, showed a
disposition to take the part of the lion, sallying out unexpectedly,
ravaging the entire district, burning Kilmallock, and returning again to
his mountains before he could be interfered with. The following year he
marched into Ulster, and on his way home burnt Athlone, the English
garrison there looking helplessly on; joined the two Mac-an-Earlas as
they were called, the sons of Lord Clanricarde, and assisted them to lay
waste Galway, and so returned triumphantly across the Shannon to
Tipperary. Once Perrot all but made an end of him, but his soldiers took
that convenient opportunity of mutinying, and so baulked their leader of
his prey. Another time, in despair of bringing the matter to any
conclusion, the president proposed that it should be decided by single
combat between them, a proposal which Fitzmaurice prudently resisted on
the ground that though Perrot's place could no doubt readily be
supplied, his own was less easily to fill, and that therefore for his
followers' sake he must decline.

At last the long game of hide-and-seek was brought to an end by Sir
James offering to submit, to which Perrot agreeing, he took the required
oaths in the church of Kilmallock, the scene of his former ravages, and
kissed the president's sword in token of his regret for "the said most
mischievous part." This farce gravely gone through, he sailed for
France, and Munster for a while was at peace. It was only a temporary
lull though. The Desmond power was still too towering to be left alone,
and both its defenders and the Government knew that they were merely
indulging in a little breathing time before the final struggle.

XXVI.

THE DESMOND REBELLION.

The tale of the great Desmond rebellion which ended only with the ruin
of that house, and with the slaughter or starvation of thousands of its
unhappy adherents, is