I am afraid
that there are no mitigating circumstances whatever. I shall
certainly confirm it," and he wrote across the official paper,
"Let the law take its course," and appended his signature, and
that was all!
Could anything be more prosaic? What a waste of an unrivalled
dramatic situation.
When I returned home for the Christmas holidays in 1866, the
Fenian rebellion had already broken out. The authorities had
reason to believe that the Vice-regal Lodge would be attacked,
and various precautions had been taken. Both guards and sentries
were doubled; four light field-guns stood in the garden, and a row
of gas-lamps had been installed there. Stands of arms made their
appearance in the passages upstairs, which were patrolled all
night by constables in rubber-soled boots, but the culminating joy
to my brother and me lay in the four loopholes with which the
walls of the bed-room we jointly occupied were pierced. The room
projected beyond the front of the main building, and was
accordingly a strategic point, but to have four real loopholes,
closed with wooden shutters, in the walls of our own bedroom was
to the two small urchins a source of immense pride.
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