's day spoke seriously, with a sense of
responsibility, because all of them--Flood, Grattan, and the rest--spoke
to armed men, who might at any time draw swords to give effect to the
speaker's words. M'Cracken spoke to men with swords already drawn and
muskets loaded. Therefore, he had some right to be eloquent, and his
hearers had some right to cheer.

Felix Matier had somehow laid hands on Phelim, the blind piper, and set
him playing. A hundred voices, voices of marching men, caught the tune,
whistled, and sang it. Matier's own voice rang out clearest and loudest
of all. It was, the "Marseillaise" they sang--a not inappropriate anthem
for soldiers about to fight for the liberty of man. But James Hope had
something else in his mind besides the storming of a French Bastille
and the guillotining of a French aristocracy. He believed that he was
fighting: for Ireland, and the foreign tune was not to his mind. Laying
his hand on Matier's shoulder he commanded silence. Then whispering to
Phelim, he set a fresh tune going on the pipes. An ancient Irish war
march shrilled through the ranks--a tune with a rush in it--a tune which
sends the battle fever through men's veins. Now and then the passion of
it reaches a climax, and the listeners, almost in spite of themselves,
must shout aloud. It is called "Brian Boroimhe's March," and it may be
that his warriors shouted when the pipers played it marching on Clontarf
against the Danes. Hope's musketeers heard it, whistled it as the piper
played, hummed it in deep voices, and always, when the moment came,
shouted aloud.

The musketeers halted, and the pikemen passed them by. The broad,
straight street lay before them, and at the end of it, half sheltered by
the market house, were the English infantry. Behind them, blocking the
end of the street, splitting it as it were into two roads, which run to
the right and left, was the wall of Lord Massereene's demesne. Across
the bridge the English cannon, almost too late, were being hurried by
an escort of sweating dragoons. There was work with them for Hope's
musketeers and Donald Ward's two brass six-pounders. But between the
infantry and M'Cracken's men was a body of cavalry, sitting in shelter
behind the wall which surrounded the church. These would cut the
musketeers to pieces. The pikemen must face them first.

The horsemen wheeled from their shelter and charged. The long pikes
were lowered, steadied, held in bristling line. There was