spurs and whip could take him to Kilworth, and demanded to see the
newly-arrived guest at the hotel. A waiter, despatched to the guest's
room, returned with the announcement that his door was locked, and that
he refused to see any one. But the pursuers had heard and recognised the
voice through the closed door. It was Fitzgerald himself.

Bursting with rage and indignation, father and son rushed up the stairs
and demanded that Fitzgerald should come out. When he refused with
oaths, they broke in the door--and found themselves face to face with a
brace of pistols. Before they could be used, however, Colonel King,
stooping suddenly, made a dash at Fitzgerald, closed with him, and was
at once engaged in a life and death struggle. Backward and forward the
combatants swayed, straining every muscle to bring their pistols into
play for the fatal shot. By an almost superhuman effort, Fitzgerald at
last wrested his right arm free. His pistol was pointed at the Colonel's
head. But before he could press the trigger, a shot rang out, and he
fell back dead, shot through the heart. Lord Kingsborough had killed his
daughter's betrayer to save his son's life.

The news of the tragedy flew throughout the country, in all the
distorted forms that such news assumes on passing from mouth to mouth.
But wherever it travelled--from the shebeens of Connemara to the
coffee-houses of Cheapside--it carried with it a wave of compassion for
the assassin and execration for his victim. As for Lord Kingsborough, he
confessed to a friend: "God knows, I don't know how I did it; but I wish
it had been done by some other hand than mine!"

As was inevitable, the Viscount and his son were arrested on a charge of
murder. Colonel King was tried at the Cork Assizes, and acquitted to a
salvo of deafening cheers, as there was no prosecution. For Lord