320 THE LOVE TOKEN. 



warning, man ! Tell the woman to get up out of this/' said the proc- 

 ther. " Don't touch her again, 1 say," said Ned. " I'm not myself 

 now ; don't vex me too much." But the procther didn't mind him ; and 

 taking the baby from her breast, he let it fall on the ground. (You see 

 the mark over his eye ? That mark he got then.) He was next going 

 to take Ketty by the arm, but Ned took up a piece of a spade-three, 

 and, without speaking, he gave him a wipe across the back of the head 

 and I'll engage, he never spoke a word afther. Well, what use in talk- 

 ing ? Ned was tried by a special commission the jury war all orange- 

 boys, and in eight hours he was hanged up like a dog." 



The speaker was interrupted by the sobs of the poor broken-hearted 

 widow. She was young ; and, notwithstanding her pale, haggard coun- 

 tenance, well looking: one child was on her bosom five others, of 

 different ages, lay miserably about her, and her two eldest boys stood by 

 the opposite wall one of them crying bitterly but the other, with a 

 look of the fiercest sternness : there was revenge and wildness written 

 in the lad's eye. The speaker continued : 



te Yes, Mr. Leslie, look at them. Is this nothing to complain of? 

 Is this no wrong ? Are our wives to be raped before our eyes our 

 childer to be tossed about like a bundle of hay? Is our only pig to be 

 seized for a fat man that we never sees, nor gets good of? Are we to 

 be hung up ourselves, our wives to be left widows, and our boys and 

 girls to be left without fathers and when we ." 



His mingled emotions overcame him; rage and grief choked his 

 words, and the tears rushed down his rugged cheeks as freely as down 

 those of the widow he spoke of. His feelings were sympathised with 

 by all in the cabin except the fore-mentioned stern boy; and even 

 Leslie himself participated in the general emotion. He had almost de- 

 termined on the course he would pursue, before his coming to the rebel 

 meeting ; but the true and genuine Irish soul now burst through the 

 fetters of pride, or the delicacy of education. He caught the speaker 

 by the hand, and emphatically said, " Trust me, I will die with and for 

 you." 



" We will trust you, Mr. George we will trust you," echoed every 

 voice (except the before-mentioned boy), and the original speaker 

 finished, by saying, 



" I give up the leading of those boys to you ; not because I think you 

 are betther, or have more money than the rest of them, but because 

 your name will serve the cause that I love better than command or 

 money." 



Not many days after the acceptance of the rebel chieftainship by 

 George Leslie, the following paragraph, confirmed by succeeding state- 

 ments, appeared in the public prints. 



About a quarter of a mile from the village of in the county 



of , a party of the *th regiment, and three companies of Lord 



's fencibles were attacked and routed with considerable loss, by a 



body of insurgents amounting to about 1,500. A circumstance of much 

 more alarm, is the fact of their having been led by the son of Samuel 



Leslie, Esq., of the county. This young man had been in the 



army, and is supposed to have spent what time he could secure, in 

 training the persons under his command. This victory of the rebels is 

 a strange, and at the present crisis, an alarming testimony of the native 

 prowess of the Irish, and proves that their cause, whatever be its moral 



