men were to be netted and brought before it. The head of the Burkes, Clanrickard, a "queen's" man, was seized and sent to Dublin. Then all the Burkes loosened their swords in their scabbards and sprang into rebellion. The rebellion grew and strengthened, before the "strong measures" of the Lord President. The Lord Deputy, Fitzwilliam, an old man, afflicted by ills of the body, crafty, cautious, treacherous, freed Clanrickard, and sent him down to make terms. The bloody hand was stayed; for a moment there was peace in Connacht. Soon, the disarmed Catholics were taken and hanged. Surrendered garrisons were put to the sword; a search for "rebels" in West Connacht saw women, and boys and old men, and all who came in Bingham's way, slain.

Into Leinster, too, English Law had driven a wedge. Mary of England's Deputies had seized Offaly and Leix, the territories of the O'Conors and the O'Mores. They had planted English settlers there; abolished the ancient territorial names and in Irish blood rechristened them King's and Queen's counties. The dispossessed chiefs and their clansmen bided their time. A noble boy grew up among them, and in manhood became an avenging sword. This was Ruari Og O'More. He attacked the homes of the English settlers; burnt their towns; took the governor of Leix and a Privy Councillor prisoners; made truces and kept them. After six years of successful guerilla warfare he fell when reconnoitring a force brought against him. His soldiers avenged his death and put the army to flight. His name remained an inspiration to oppressed Irish, down to the present day. "God, and Our Lady, and Rory O'More!"

The English troops were commanded in Leix and Offaly by a Sir Francis Cosby. This man gave a banquet in the Rath of Mullaghmast in Kildare. And he stretched out friendly hands to the O'Conors and O'Mores and their followers. He invited them to the banquet. He gave it in the Queen's name; he promised her protection. They went. One gentleman, arriving late, suspected something, and paused. Guests went in, he saw, but none came out. Advancing, he reconnoitred, beheld slaughtered bodies, and being now attacked himself, cut his way through and escaped. Of the O'Mores alone, one hundred and eighty were murdered. Cosby lived at Strabally. A tall tree with spreading branches grew before his door, upon which he hanged men and women and children. If he hanged a mother and an infant he hanged the child in the mother's long hair.*

4 Ireland under Elizabeth. O'Sullivan Beare. 1621.

But a day of reckoning came. In the battle of Glenmalure Cosby fell in the rout when the soldiers of Feach O'Byrne cut down the flying forces of Lord Gray. O'Byrne, there, in the Wicklow mountains, had held his country against all attempts of the English to seize it. Gray, newly arrived in Dublin, thought at one stroke to break O'Byrne's power. He gathered a great army and marched into Wicklow. He believed he had trapped O'Byrne. The glen was deep; its sides dark wooded heights and rocks; a shallow stream with a rugged bed flowed through. He raised an earthwork across the mouth that the flying Irish might be trapped and cut down there. To see that flight and slaughter he went up on a height, he and his courtiers and staff. His soldiers entered the glen, moving up it in silence, a long array in mail and buff and scarlet, gunsmen and horse. No sight of the foe; silence save for the tramp of their marching feet. The watchers on the height began to laugh. "The game had broken away," they jested. "The old fox had run to earth." Then as the ranks of the column loosened on the broken course, the silence of the wood was shattered and the bullets of the Irish swept the line. O'Byrne's men sprang from the tree-clad slopes, leapt over the rocks, and threw themselves upon the flanks of the foe. Gray and his jesters fled. Of the great force with which he had marched out of Dublin, but a few broken companies returned.

CHAPTER XLIV

RED HUGH

IN the North the smouldering fire had flamed forth again. Two things rekindled it. One: The predestined boy had come whose advent a Tir-Conaill seer had long ago foretold. Young Hugh O'Donnell, Aod Ruad, the golden-haired, minatory, deadly foe to England; who was to stride through the history of the last years of the sixteenth century-the boy whose fame and renown was noised through the five provinces of Eirinn even before he reached the age of manhood, as being conspicuous for wisdom, understanding, personal beauty, and noble deeds.

The fame and renown of him had reached the ears of Lord Deputy Perrot, illegitimate son of Henry VIII. Where a strong and ruthless hand, or treachery, was necessary to advance his Queen's interests in Ireland Perrot used either, as suited the occasion. He would have the boy.

The dreaded lad was being fostered by MacSwiney, Lord of Fanat on the Northern sea's verge. When the boy was fourteen an innocent looking merchant ship once sailed into Loch Swilly, and anchored under the white stone castle of MacSwiney. The courteous captain had wine for sale. The courteous captain invited visitors aboard the ship. The courteous captain would like MacSwiney and his retinue and friends to do him the honour of a visit aboard, and to partake of some rare wine. They cameand with them the noble boy, erect and eagle-eyed, bright, proud and confident, "of a countenance so alluring that none could look at him without loving him." When the guests sat them down to wine in the captain's state cabin, they suddenly found themselves entrapped and captured by fifty soldiers who were conjured out of the ship's bowels. MacSwiney and the others were released, and given hostages, but the boy's release could not be purchased. It was for him the ship had come. Red Hugh was carried away to Dublin and placed, a prisoner, in the Birmingham tower of the castle. In Fanat, throughout all Tir-Conaill, and indeed through Eirinn there was weeping, wrath, shame and anger. In Donegal

Castle the boy's mother, the dauntless Inghín Dubh, "Dark Daughter" of MacDonnell of the Isles, now devoted her life to keep TirConaill for the boy. She negotiated and plotted for his releasein vain.

After three years the boy made a wonderful and daring escape on a December night-but alas! was retaken. After another year, this time spent in irons, in company with Henry and Art, the sons of Shane O'Neill, both in irons also, he made another daring attempt and this time succeeded in freeing all three.

A file had been passed in to him. It was Christmas Eve, 1591, a dark snowy evening. Christmas cheer was flowing among the jailers and guards. Now, the boys thought! Outside the Castle, in a friend's stable, four horses bitted and saddled have stood for three nights. The faithful horse-boy is waiting. While the feast was being celebrated with wine and jollity by the Elizabethan soldiers in the Castle, the boy industriously worked the file. "Link after link yielded to the fierce attrition and the hungry gnawings of the sharp toothed steel, and Red Hugh stood forth free! Free, and the guard giving no sign! Henry O'Neill stretched out his hands, while Art held the lamp. Swiftly the good file did its work, and Henry, unfettered, snatched the lamp from his brother's hands. Art was the last freed, and Hugh, youngest of the three, did all the filing with his own sinewy untiring hands." (Standish O'Grady.)

Free now, unshackled, swift hands tore down the hangings of the bed, knotted them together, and the rope was ready. The hangings secured, Henry went first, then Red Hugh, and last of all Art, who in his descent loosened a stone which fell and struck him. They flung their cloaks from them when they reached the open air, stole to the moat, and entered the icy water. The snow was still falling; waiting on the bank, whitened, listening for the strokes of the swimmers, the horse-boy stood. He carried three pairs of strong shoes; their horses had unfortunately been taken away. Swiftly their guide led them through the dark streets and alleys to the outer rampart. And there Henry O'Neill was missing, having fallen behind and lost his way. There was no time to return; to look for him. The Castle and death were behind.1

They were over it; out into the deeper darkness; past the outskirts of the city; into the open country, on towards Slieve Ruadh, the Three Rock Mountain; snow everywhere. They passed over

1 Henry O'Neill succeeded in getting to Ulster and was imprisoned by the Earl of Tyrone, who considered him a rival as the son of Shane who had slain the Earl's father.

bogs glimmering white, through ravines; up among the snow drifts on the slope, the hardy tireless horse-boy leading, Red Hugh's pace "vigorous and swift." But Art-his strength and wind had given way-dropped behind. The swift-paced Red Hugh fell back to his side, supported and cheered him; kept slow step with his slow step. Soon Art could only limp, and moved haltingly along, with an arm on Red Hugh's shoulder and another on the horse-boy's. Dawn came; Christmas Day; in the city bells were heralding the Birth; in the Castle there was wrath and fear-and hot pursuit. Then Art could walk no longer. Red Hugh and the horse-boy carried him, Red Hugh himself with blistered feet and his own strength failing. All day they were on the white mountains, lingering, resting, advancing, till at last Red Hugh could go no further, and the horse-boy left them, hastening if he might to save them and bring help from Feach O'Byrne. Between the two loughs, Dan and Glendalough, under a rock, or in an open cave, it is thought, the boys waited. They slept heavily that night, and awoke in the morning to a second day of cold and hunger. For forty hours they had eaten no food. Their cloaks were gone, shed by the Castle moat; they had only their doublets and hose.

The day passed, the helpless boys waiting in the snow, and the furious foe engirdling the white mountains. When the morning of the third day came Art was dying. Red Hugh ate leaves, and brought some to Art. "Eat something, no matter what," he said. "See the brute animals, Art, they feed on leaves and grass. True, we are rational, yet also we are animals."

But Art was beyond such food, beyond any food indeed. White death there by the rock was numbing body and brain. The snow began to fall again. Evening came. Red Hugh lay down by Art's side; the boys clasped their arms about each other. The snow covered them.

In the closing twilight Feach's soldiers found them in that embrace. Not at once, so hidden were they under the snow. By the light of their lanthorns the four soldiers groped about, finding the search not easy. "So overlaid were they with the snow as if with blanket which had congealed around them, and frozen to them their skirts of fine linen, and their moistened shoes and leather covering of their feet, and they themselves were completely covered with snow and there was also no life in their members, but they were as dead."

Their arms were disentwined, their bodies chafed, spirits put between their lips, "the men deeply grieving as they uncovered the white faces, and the limp motionless limbs of the noblest born