d. Just at first the
United Irish Society had been quite the fashion, and held no more
rebellious than the great volunteer movement of a dozen years earlier.
But as time went by things became more serious. Moderate and fearful
men fell away from the Society, and the union between Northern
Protestants and Southern Catholics, which had been a matter of much
concern to the Government of the day, was met by a policy of goading
the leaders on to rebellion. By and by this and that idol of the
populace was flung into prison. Wolfe Tone was in France, praying,
storming, commanding, forcing an expedition to act in unison with a
rising on Irish soil. Father Anthony was excited in these days. The
France of the Republic was not his France, and the stain of the blood
of the Lord's Anointed was upon her, but for all that the news of the
expedition from Brest set his blood coursing so rapidly and his pulses
beating, that he was fain to calm with much praying the old turbulent
spirit of war which possessed him.

Many of the young fishermen had left the Island and were on the
mainland, drilling in secrecy. There were few left save old men and
women and children when the blow fell. The Government, abundantly
informed of what went on in the councils of the United Irishmen, knew
the moment to strike, and took it. The rebellion broke out in various
parts of the country, but already the leaders were in prison. Calamity
followed calamity. Heroic courage availed nothing. In a short time
Wolfe Tone lay dead in the Provost-Marshal's prison of Dublin; and
Lord Edward Fitzgerald was dying of his wounds. In Dublin,
dragoonings, hangings, pitch-capping and flogging set up a reign of
terror. Out of the first sudden silence terrible tidings came to the
Island.

At that time there was no communication with the mainland except by
the fishermen's boats or at low water. The Island was very much out of
the world; and the echoes of what went on in the world came vaguely as
from a distance to the ears of the Island people. They were like
enough to be safe, though there was blood and fire and torture on the
mainland. They were all old and helpless people, and they might well
be safe from the soldiery. There was no yeomanry corps within many
miles of the Island, and it was the yeomanry, tales of whose doings
made the Islanders' blood run cold. Not the foreign soldiers--oh no,
they were often merciful, and found this kind of warfare bitterly
distasteful. But