It will be perceived, then, that both Kate McCarthy and Nicholas were influenced by the same just and deadly spirit against England; and that neither thought it otherwise than meritorious, to hurl that tyrant to the dust, at any time and under any circumstances. The iron had penetrated their souls; and now that rumors were afloat touching the intention of the great organization of Fenianism, which overspread the American Union, to make a descent upon the Canadas, with a view to destroying the power of England upon this continent, and ultimately rescuing Ireland from the grasp of the oppressor, Kate’s eye was lit, from time to time, with the most patriotic fervor; while the world could, at any moment, discover the true nature of the fame that burned within her soul, from the emerald sheen of the silken band which invariably bound up her raven hair, and encircled her snowy throat.
Once or twice she happened to encounter Lauder in Buffalo, so as to recognize him without the possibility of mistake; while on several occasions, she could not divest herself of the idea that he had just passed her in disguise; although she could not imagine what prompted him to such secrecy, when she never noticed him since she had left Toronto, or recognized him on the two occasions when she chanced to meet him in the public street. Yet, a strange presentiment seemed to impress her that he had not, after all her plainness with him, abandoned the idea of obtaining her hand, notwithstanding the repugnance she had always evinced towards him. Now, however, that Nicholas was almost within hail of her, and that her friends, in Buffalo at least, were true to her in every relation, she felt secure from whatever machinations her imagination conjured up; and, therefore, whenever the subject suddenly obtruded itself upon her thoughtful moments, she dismissed it as summarily; reassured by the conviction that she was totally beyond the reach of any schemes that might have been concocted in relation to her or her future.
For the purpose, however, of setting the matter at rest forever, she was resolved that her lover should leave the service now as early as possible; and, stimulated by this desire, on returning to her residence, one evening towards the middle of April of the year in which we first encountered him on the bridge leading from the Fort, she addressed a letter to Nicholas, urging him to leave the army as soon as practicable, assigning as a reason the presence of Lauder in Buffalo, whom she had, as she felt assured, again encountered or rather discovered in the vicinity of her residence, and adding a further reason, based upon the rumor, that the Army of the Irish Republic would soon move upon Canada, and that his regiment could not fail to be called out to oppose it—a circumstance that would, as she well knew, be the cause of more actual pain to him, than anything that could possibly occur in the discharge of what was termed his duty.
This letter Barry received the second day after it was written; and on consulting with O’Brien, at once set about procuring his discharge; but as the Colonel of his regiment had gone to the Lower Provinces, from which he was not to return for a week or two, the matter was left in abeyance until he should again arrive in town. In due course, however, he did return, and the necessary application being made, no objection was offered to granting the discharge, as Barry’s conduct had always been most unexceptionable since he entered the service.
In this way matters stood, then, on the night on which we found Big Tom in secret conclave with his two friends, Nick and Burk, in his own little sanctum; Nick having got leave to stay out until morning, as the officer in command informed him, it was probably the last request he should have the power of granting him.
CHAPTER IV.
An organization so wide-spread and so numerous as that of the Fenian Brotherhood, it was not to expected that all its members, without an exception, were good men and true; yet so rarely were traitors found among its ranks, that no patriotic confraternity of its magnitude had ever, in ancient or modern times, presented so pure a record in this relation. When we take into consideration the fact that, the insidious and subsidizing gold of England was brought to bear upon the frightful poverty of the masses that composed the organization in Ireland, as well as the temptations to treason held out by the government, through their agents in the Republic of the United States of America, the wonder is that there were not more Corydons and Masseys to do the work of the usurper, and betray the cause to which they had sworn fealty. However, there were traitors sufficient at work to cause great damage in individual cases, and send many a brave fellow into the gloomy depths of a British dungeon. Nearly all the injury in this connection, however, appears to have been done at home, as treason of this character was totally powerless under any foreign flag—or at least not so capable of direct mischief. From the first moment of the inception of the organization, the British and the Canadian governments had their paid spies in and outside the American press, who kept the authorities well informed as to all the particulars that transpired within the range of their observation or through other channels; but these disclosures were necessarily meagre and, in many cases, totally unreliable; from the circumstance that those disreputable parties, for the purpose of magnifying their importance, and securing further the patronage of their employers, colored and distorted facts so terribly, that scarce a line from their pens or a sentence from their lips was worthy even the slightest credence. Still, from time to time, some little rumor struggled to the surface, which pointed to treachery somewhere; and thus it was that the authorities of the organization were often placed awkwardly in relation to the idle though dangerous gossip which occasionally singled out this individual or that, as the party who had betrayed his trust. In the various cities along the American frontier, there was from time to time a good deal of this gossip—a circumstance that might have been quite easily accounted for; seeing that the inhabitants of some of these places were in what might be termed hourly intercommunication with the people of Canada; giving, in some cases, rise to suspicions, which were in the main without any foundation. This distrust, although affecting the stability or growing prosperity of the Brotherhood in scarcely any degree, had yet the effect of strengthening the hands of British sympathizers in the Union, and inducing them to resolve themselves into little coteries or societies—such as was hurriedly formed not long since under the influence and guidance of Mr. H——, of Buffalo, for the ostensible purpose of aiding destitute Canadians, but with the real design of keeping an eye upon Fenianism, and disclosing, as far as the members could divine, all its intentions, hopes and prospects, to the British government. Occasionally an emissary, direct from Great Britain, in the guise of a lecturer or tourist, visited these associations and received their report, which, as far as was practicable, he verified by personal observation, and through whatever reliable channels, he believed to be open to him. These emissaries have been supplemented by others of a somewhat different character, but all bearing upon the interests of England. In this latter case, however, it has been the direct unfriendly relations between the American government and that of Great Britain, which had stimulated the pilgrimages of certain individuals of this class to the shores of the great Republic. England perceiving that she had Fenianism to deal with on the one hand, and American hostility, regarding her infamous course during the late war, on the other, in her cowardly fears for the consequences, backed up her anti-Fenian agents, by sending out such persons as Mr. Charles Dickens and Mr. Henry Vincent, to prove to the citizens of the Commonwealth how friendly the sentiments that England had always entertained for them, and how disasterous a thing it would be to both peoples, should a war, under any circumstances, be permitted to take place between them. Both these gentlemen, and others, distinguished and popular in their respective literary shades, went forth preaching peace and good will between the Saxons on the one side of the Atlantic and their so-called American cousins on the other. With an audacity the most barefaced and unaccountable, upon every possible occasion, opportune or otherwise, they wore the olive branch at their button-hole, and described in periods the most eloquent, the identity of blood and interests which characterized both nations, and which it were heinous to ignore. Notwithstanding that for ninety long years their infamous government had been indulging in the most heartless sneers, insults and injustice towards the press, the people and the executive of the United States—notwithstanding that during the late war every reverse of the arms of the Republic was hailed with heartfelt joy by the English party, both at home and in Canada, and that pirates were built and fitted out under the very eyes of the British Cabinet, and with the secret sanction of that corrupt horde, to make war upon American commerce and destroy the Union in the hour of its extremity—notwithstanding all this, we say, and maugre the kindred circumstance of subsidizing the South with money and arms so as to prolong the fratracidal conflict until both parties lay bloody and broken at the feet of English despotism, these able and smooth-tongued gentry had the accursed assurance to stand up in most of the principal cities of the Democracy, and assert broadly, that England was the true and tried friend of republican institutions and of the people who sustained them on the free continent of America. Under the liberal laws which accord freedom of speech to every man who touches the shores of the Republic, these men had, we know, a right to express, publicly or otherwise, their sentiments in this connection, how treacherous and untenable soever; but what we could never fathom, was the daring of any journal professing to be true to the interests of freedom or those of the Union, in endorsing those sentiments and setting them forth to the world as truthful and worthy the acceptance of every genuine American, no matter what his creed or party. An attempt so monstrous to stullify all past experience and ignore all history has never been made in any relation whatever; and the wonder is, that, few as they are, so many Americans have been led astray by it. To any individual, of even the most ordinary penetration, it must be obvious, that the present cringing and treacherous attitude assumed by England towards the American people, is but the mask of a foul and dangerous spirit, snatched up in a moment of mortal fear to be worn only until some opportune moment arrives when it can be thrown aside with safety, revealing the old, familiar, demoniacal scowl which lurked unaltered beneath its smiling exterior. America, to be true to herself, must beware of such false lights, of the press as these. They are for the most part subsidized by English gold, or so imbuded with English sentiment, that the interests of the Union are quite a secondary consideration with them. In evidence of the truth of this assertion, we have only to dwell upon the apathy with which these journalists regard the building up of a dangerous despotism upon our borders, in the very teeth of American traditions and sentiments, and in opposition to the feelings of the masses whom it effects more immediately, and who were not permitted by their tyrants to express a single opinion at the polls on so grave a subject as the total disruption or remodeling of the constitution under which they lived. Look at the expression of Nova Scotia on this head, and see how it reflects upon the course pursued by the great American people in relation to the confederation of the adjoining Provinces. Not long since the inhabitants of that section of the New Dominion set forth, in a memorial to the British government, that this same confederation was forced upon the people of the Canadas, through falsehood, bribery and the vilest fraud. And, yet, free and generous America, who assumes to be the day-star of freedom on this continent, and to the world, permitted this despotic measure to be enforced at her own threshold, and in relation to a people, thousands upon thousands of whom sympathized with her interests and institutions, and looked forward with longing eyes to the hour when the Stars and Stripes should float from every flag-staff and tower throughout the whole of the English possessions in the New World. Surely the missionary spirit of the Republic has not been best illustrated in this instance; nor can we discover now, how it is, that the authorities of the Union sit quietly playing at thumbs, while the Parliament of the Dominion is voting millions for the defenses of the new despotism, and framing projects that are intended to result in a line of impregnable forts from Sandwich to Gaspe, and at every point where it is possible for an invader to set foot upon their shores. Wait until false, foul and treacherous England can sit beneath the shadow of the guns of her infant monarchy, on the Canadian frontier, and then see if she does not begin to show her cloven foot anew. Let her once get a permanent foothold among the newly projected fortresses along the St. Lawrence and the Lakes, with Quebec as their key, and the peace and prosperity of America, as well as the stability of republican institutions, cannot be counted as secure, for a single day, from petty annoyance, or perhaps inroads of a more formidable character. This idea may, we know, be scouted by those who have a well grounded faith in the destiny of the American people and the power they undoubtedly possess in a naval and military point of view; but, after all, a gun is a gun and a garrison a garrison; and to allow an implacable and formidable enemy to possess herself of either, within range of our fire-sides, when we can prevent it, is what we should call courting the presence of a bombshell on our borders, that may at any moment be thrown into our midst.
Without dwelling further on this particular point, however, we may observe, that through some of the channels already referred to, the English government became aware, in 1865, that it was the intention of the Irish Nationalists in the United States to make a descent, at no distant day, upon Canada, and seize it as a basis of operations, with a view to carrying out their projects for the redemption of Ireland. In connexion with this information, they found, also, that the troops in Canada were largely interspersed with Irishmen, and it was consequently deemed necessary to send a secret agent to the Provinces to look into the case and report upon it, or rather upon the sentiment of the Irish element in the colony, whether in or out of the army, in relation to Fenianism. This they thought could be best accomplished through the instrumentality of a tried emissary of their own, as even from the Provincial Cabinet conflicting accounts were arriving constantly in relation to the all-important subject. In furtherance of this view, the Castle of Dublin was, of course, applied to, and a creature selected to do the work, who was not himself fully aware that his position was recognized by the imperial Cabinet so decidedly, but simply fancied himself in the capacity of a sort of trusty policeman, appointed by one of the Castle authorities, who was anxious to know for himself how the case stood on the other side of the Atlantic. This agent was one of the cleverest of his class, and possessed of the most consummate cunning, and a spirit of reckless daring but seldom evinced by members of his tribe. Already he had rendered substantial service to the Viceroy and to England, as an inveterate spy, and a scoundrel who had, on more than one occasion, distinguished himself in the witness box. In addition to his investigations in Canada, he was instructed to extend the line of his observations to the United States also, and to move from point to point, as his own judgment might dictate in the premises. He was, of course, furnished with ample means to carry out successfully the project intrusted to him; and although but little faith could be placed in his integrity, so far as the disposal of the funds put in his hands were concerned, yet, by an opportune circumstance, connected with his own personal interest, and overriding any sum that was entrusted to him, the Castle was enabled to hold him in check, no matter how he might be tempted, or where he chanced to move. With his activity and fidelity thus insured, this miserable wretch, who went in Dublin by the name of Philip the Spy, was despatched on his mission, and, in due coarse arriving at Quebec, set about it in his usual cautious and conning manner. He visited the Citadel as a stranger, under the ordinary pass from the Town Major, and soon made himself agreeable in the dark, low canteen among the soldiers. Whenever he thought he discovered a young and inexperienced Irishman among the rank and file, he was unusually pleasant and communicative. With such a companion he always moved about the garrison, descanting upon its force and power, and imperceptibly stealing into his good graces, until he found some opportunity of making an apparently accidental enquiry touching the information he was desirous of obtaining. In this way he became possessed of the knowledge that even Quebec held within its impregnable walls many a man who was far from being the true friend of England, and who, as he surmised, waited the opportunity of not only deserting her flag, but betraying her stronghold into the hands of her enemies. In this state of things he could not but discover the truthfulness of the beautiful line of the poet, “Coelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt,” for he perceived that the mighty waters of the great Atlantic were insufficient to wash out the blood stains from the skirts of England in relation to Ireland, or to remove the deep hatred of the exiled children of the latter, towards a tyrannical power that had held them in bitter thrall so unjustly and so long.