pass out his keys; he refused, and some one exclaimed, "Blow off the
lock!" In a moment the muzzle of a revolver was against the lock, and
it was blown off; but Brett, stooping down to look through the keyhole,
received the bullet in his head, and fell dying as the door flew open.
Another moment, and Allen, a lad of seventeen, had wrenched open the
doors of the compartments occupied by Kelly and Deasy, dragged them
out, and while two or three hurried them off to a place of safety, the
others threw themselves between the fugitives and the police, and with
levelled revolvers guarded their flight. The Fenian leaders once safe,
they scattered, and young William Allen, whose one thought had been for
his chiefs, seeing them safe, fired his revolver in the air, for he
would not shed blood in his own defence. Disarmed by his own act, he
was set on by the police, brutally struck down, kicked and stoned, and
was dragged off to gaol, faint and bleeding, to meet there some of his
comrades in much the same plight as himself. Then Manchester went mad,
and race-passions flared up into flame; no Irish workman was safe in a
crowd of Englishmen, no Englishman safe in the Irish quarter. The
friends of the prisoners besieged "Lawyer Roberts's" house, praying his
aid, and he threw his whole fiery soul into their defence. The man who
had fired the accidentally fatal shot was safely out of the way, and
none of the others had hurt a human being. A Special Commission was
issued, with Mr. Justice Blackburn at its head--"the hanging judge,"
groaned Mr. Roberts--and it was soon in Manchester, for all Mr.
Roberts's efforts to get the venue of the trial changed were futile,
though of fair trial then in Manchester there was no chance. On October
25th the prisoners were actually brought up before the magistrates in
irons, and Mr. Ernest Jones, their counsel, failing in his protest
against this outrage, threw down his brief and left the court. So great
was the haste with which the trial was hurried on that on the 29th
Allen, Larkin, Gould (O'Brien), Maguire, and Condon were standing in