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Updated: May 18, 2025
Kilcowan was two miles away and, having learned from the peasant that the people intended to attack at a point where the road passed between two hills, a mile and a half beyond the village, he galloped on at full speed. He arrived, however, too late to take any part in the fight.
Walter was taken first to Kilcowan. There he found a party of twelve or fourteen peasants, surrounded by cavalry. The whole village was in flames. Several of the inhabitants had been cut down, as the cavalry entered. The rest, with the exception of those in the hands of the troops, had fled in the darkness.
It was the sentry at the end of the village. "Kilcowan is on fire, sir!" Walter looked in that direction, and saw a broad glare of light. "Ride out, and bring in the advanced sentry," he said, "as quick as possible." He called the other men out, and bade them mount; that done, they sat, ready to ride off on the return of their comrades.
He ordered the men to keep the saddles on their horses, and to hitch them to the doors of the cabins where they took up their quarters, in readiness for instant movement. He placed one mounted sentry at the entrance to the village, and another a quarter of a mile on the road towards Kilcowan. At nine o'clock, he heard the sound of a horse galloping up to the door, and ran out.
"My dear Walter," Colonel L'Estrange said, "I am happy, indeed, that we came up when we did. What should I have felt, if I had afterwards learned that you, who had saved my life, had been murdered here, for your execution would have been neither more nor less than murder, as was that of the twelve poor fellows who were taken at Kilcowan a brutal murder!
They continued the pursuit for a mile, cutting off a few stragglers, less well mounted than the rest, and then returned to Kilcowan, where the peasants had just arrived in triumph with the rescued carts of potatoes. "What are you going to do?" he asked, when the excitement of the welcome, accorded by the women to the captors, had subsided a little.
One day when, with his little band, he was halting at a village, some ten miles in rear of the camp, a peasant ran in. "A party of their horse have just seized some carts laden with potatoes at Kilcowan, and are driving them off. The boys are mustering to attack them on their way back." "It is too bad," Walter exclaimed.
The English, as he afterwards learned, had, immediately they arrived at Kilcowan, inquired where the Irish cavalry, who had taken part in the afternoon's fight, were quartered, and on hearing that they were but two miles away, the officer in command had forced one of the peasants to act as guide, and to take a party round, by a detour, so as to enter at the other end of the village, just as another party rode in by the direct road.
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