"Do you recognise it?" he asked.

"I do--I made it myself."

The Court was astonished. The prosecuting counsel asked:--

"How do you know it is yours?"

"By certain marks on it," the man replied, and these he proceeded to
describe. As the description was found to be correct, and as the other
witness, who had sworn that _he_ had made the weapon, had not described
any such marks, the case against Hogan broke down, and he was acquitted.

A few days afterwards he called on me, and explained how the thing had
happened. When he was arrested, his friends in Birmingham, having still
on hand some of the revolvers he had purchased, had an exact copy of one
of them made by a gunsmith whom they could trust, with instructions to
put his own private marks upon it, which he could afterwards identify.
It was this weapon that had deceived the witness for the prosecution to
such an extent that he wrongly swore to it as being his own manufacture.

Daniel Darragh, who was also put upon his trial for supplying the
weapons for the Manchester Rescue, was not so fortunate as his friend
Hogan, for he was convicted. He was sent into penal servitude on April
15th, 1869, but, being in delicate health, did not long survive, for he
died in Portland Prison on June 28th of the following year. William
Hogan, as the fulfilment of a sacred duty, brought the body of his
friend home to Ireland, to be buried among his own kith and kin, in the
Catholic cemetery of Ballycastle, Co. Antrim; and Edward O'Meagher
Condon, when recently visiting this country, considered it a no less