make a convulsive spring,
touch with his hind feet on the top of the wall, and roll over. My
Irish horse cleared it in the native style, and I found my enemy
crushed under his hunter, and evidently in the pangs of death. He had
been flung on a heap of stones, and the weight of the falling horse
had broken his spine. I poured some brandy down his throat, relieved
him from the incumbrance of the hunter--attempted to give him
hope--but he told me that it was useless; that he felt death coming
on, and that I was the last man who should wish him to live, "as he
had pledged himself to my extinction." For a while, his recollections
were wild, and he talked of events in France and Spain, where he
seemed to have done some deeds which affected him with peculiar horror
in the prospect of dissolution. But, after a brief period of those
terrible disclosures, his pains totally ceased, his mind grew clear;
and he acknowledged that he was one of the leading agents of a
National Conspiracy to republicanize Ireland. "You are too kind," said
he to me, "to one who now sees the madness of the design, and is
sensible of the guilt of taking away the lives of honourable men." A
lapse of weakness here tied his tongue; and I brought him a draught of
water from a spring which gurgled beside the wall. He thanked me, and
proceeded to say, that my "character for vigilance and activity had
alarmed the principal conspirators, and that he, thinking all crimes
meritorious in a popular cause, had resolved to signalize the
commencement of his services, by putting the English secretary to
death on the first occasion." For this purpose, he had followed my
steps for some time in the metropolis, but without finding a fit
opportunity. The intelligence of my hunting days in the north gave him
renewed expectations, and he had followed me in various disguises; had
been present at dinners and balls, where I was the principal guest;
had even frequently conversed with me on public and foreign topics; in
fact, had haunted me with a case of pistols constantly in his bosom;
yet had never been able to find the true opportunity of despatching me
without _eclat_. He had, at last, determined to give up the object as
altogether hopeless; and had already prepared to act on a bolder scale
by heading open rebellion, when he heard of my intending to hunt on
this day. It was to be his last experiment; "and how rejoiced I am,"
said he, "that it has failed!" He now remained for a