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We did not need this fine eloquence to assure us of the greatness of our O'Neills and our Tones, our O'Donnells and our Mitchels, but it so quickens the spirit and warms the blood to read it, it so touches by the admiration won from ancient and modern times an enduring principle of the human heart the capacity to appreciate a great deed and rise over every physical defeat that we know in the persistence of the spirit we shall come to a veritable triumph.

It was while Tyrconnell was under the rule of this heroic soldier that the unfortunate feud arose between the O'Neils and O'Donnells. Both families, sprung from a common ancestor, of equal antiquity and equal pride, neither would yield a first place to the other. "Pay me my tribute," was O'Neil's demand; "I owe you no tribute, and if I did " was O'Donnell's reply.

For nearly forty years he continued the central figure among the Anglo-Irish, and as his family were closely connected by marriage with the McCarthys, O'Carrolls of Ely, the O'Conors of Offally, O'Neils and O'Donnells, he exercised immense influence over the affairs of all the Provinces.

Parties of Scots troopers and the horseless O'Donnells were scattered over the farmlands and country ahead, but these offered no menace as the two horsemen rode slowly through them.

It cannot be doubted that even the constant repetition of the names of the Blakes, O'Donnells, and Sarsfields, in the bulletins sent home to England, tended to enforce reflections of that description on the statesmen and the nation, and to inspirit and sustain the struggling Catholics.

"We cannot well ride around," said Turlough, when they had ridden back a little, leaving dead men on the road. "But a little way back is a path that leads out and around Swineford. Put ten men here to keep these O'Donnells from following us, and we will make a short cut to the Moy near Kiltanmugh. It was a clever trick, this!"

In Ulster the great southern rising had produced singularly little excitement. The chiefs for the most part had remained aloof, and to a great degree, loyal. The O'Donnells, who had been reinstated it will be remembered in their own territory by Sidney, kept the peace. Sir John Perrot, who after the departure of Grey became Lord-deputy, seems in spite of his severity to have won confidence.

It was the same with the natives, particularly with the 0'Neills and the O'Donnells, in the north. The whole island and its general interests seemed the concern of no one, so taken up were they by the affairs of their own particular locality. And this state of feeling had existed from the beginning, even among holy men.

"Then I will to follow your rede, divide my men as you say, and when we have slain the Dark Master, we will cut off the last of these O'Donnells of his, ride to Millhaven and take that hold, and send word to the Bird Daughter that she may keep Bertragh Castle and send Cathbarr north to me.

A young Irish gentleman of the numerous clan O'Donnells, and a Patrick, hardly a distinction of him until we know him, had bound himself, by purchase of a railway-ticket, to travel direct to the borders of North Wales, on a visit to a notable landowner of those marches, the Squire Adister, whose family-seat was where the hills begin to lift and spy into the heart of black mountains.