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Updated: May 31, 2025
It is true he remembered that this same Mary Mahon belonged to a family that had been inimical to his house. She was a woman who had, in her early life, been degraded by crime, the remembrance of which had been by no means forgotten. She was, besides, a paramour to the Red Rapparee, and he attributed much of her dark and ill-boding prophecy to a hostile and malignant spirit.
"What what how was it?" asked his master; "who did it? and by whose authority was it done?" "Sir Robert Whitecraft and his men did it, sir." "Ay, but I can't conceive he had any authority for such an act." "Wasn't Mr. Reilly an outlaw, sir? Didn't the Red Rapparee, who is now a good Protestant, swear insurrection against him?"
The day appointed for the execution of the Red Rapparee and him arrived nay, the very hour had come; but still there was hope, among his friends. The sheriff, a firm, but fair and reasonable man, waited beyond the time named by the judge for his execution.
"In the next place," proceeded the Rapparee, "think of your daughter, that you will never see again, either in this world or the next." "I know I am unworthy of having such an angel," replied the old man, "but unless you were a cruel and a heartless ruffian, you would not at this moment mention her, or bring the thoughts of her to my recollection."
I could have taken up this ruffian, this Red Rapparee, as he is properly called, upon suspicion; but that would have occasioned delay; and it is my object to lodge him in jail this night, so as to give him no chance of escape unless he breaks prison; but in order to prevent that, I shall give strict injunctions, in consequence of the danger to be apprehended from so powerful and desperate a character, that he be kept in strong irons."
For a long time the old man sat looking into the fire, where he began gradually to picture to himself strange forms and objects in the glowing embers, one of whom he thought resembled the Red Rapparee about to shoot him; another, Willy Reilly making love to his daughter; and behind all, a high gallows, on which he beheld the said Reilly hanging for his crime.
"Why, the thing, sir," said the Rapparee, addressing himself to the squire, "is very plain and simple; but, Sir Robert, it was not a plot between me and Reilly the plot was his own.
He began to apprehend that if ever Tom Steeple, fool though he was, kept too much about the haunts and resorts of the Rapparee, that cunning scoundrel, who was an adept in all the various schemes and forms of detection, might take the alarm, and, aided probably by Whitecraft, make his escape out of the country.
After an unusual delay the sheriff felt himself called upon to order both the Rapparee and the baronet for execution. In waiting so long for a pardon, he felt that he had transgressed his duty, and he accordingly ordered them out for the last ceremony.
Of the other Leinster leaders, Walter Devereux, the last colleague of Father Murphy, was arrested at Cork, on the eve of sailing for America, tried and executed; Fitzgerald and Aylmer were spared on condition of expatriation; months afterwards, Holt surrendered, was transported, and returned after several years, to end his days where he began his career; Dwyer alone maintained the life of a Rapparee for five long years among the hills of Wicklow, where his adventures were often of such a nature as to throw all fictitious conceptions of an outlaw's life into commonplace by comparison.
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