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The Dock and the Scaffold by Unknown
page 8 of 121 (06%)
from Ireland there came evidences of a different state of feeling.
Breathless envoys arrived almost weekly in New York, declaring that
the Fenian Brotherhood in Ireland were burning for the fray--that they
awaited the landing of Colonel Kelly with feverish impatience--that
it would be impossible to restrain them much longer from fighting--and
that the arrival of the military leaders, whom America was expected
to supply, would be the signal for a general uprising. Encouraged
by representations like these, Colonel Kelly and a chosen body of
Irish-American officers departed for Ireland in January, and set
themselves, on their arrival in the old country, to arrange the plans
of the impending outbreak. How their labours eventuated, and how the
Fenian insurrection of March, '67, resulted, it is unnecessary to
explain; it is enough for our purpose to state that for several months
after that ill-starred movement was crushed, Colonel Kelly continued
to reside in Dublin, moving about with an absence of disguise and
a disregard for concealment which astonished his confederates, but
which, perhaps, contributed in no slight degree to the success with
which he eluded the efforts directed towards his capture. At length
the Fenian organization in Ireland began to pass through the same
changes that had given it new leaders and fresh vitality in America.
The members of the organization at home began to long for union
with the Irish Nationalists who formed the branch of the confederacy
regenerated under Colonel Roberts; and Kelly, who, for various
reasons, was unwilling to accept the new _regime_, saw his adherents
dwindle away, until at length he found himself all but discarded by
the Fenian circles in Dublin. Then he crossed over to Manchester,
where he arrived but a few weeks previous to the date of his
accidental arrest in Oak-street.

The arrest of Colonel Kelly and his aide-de-camp, as the English
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