"Tell me--do you have Prodestans in this Society of yours?"

"Certainly," Davitt answered. "We invite all Irishmen."

"Then we'll have nothing to do with yez!"

As my Aunt Mary could relate thrilling stories of '98, so could my own
mother tell me all about the savagery of Orangemen in her days. She used
to describe to me the attempts of an Orange procession to pass through
Dolly's Brae, when she was a young girl, before she left Ireland.
Dolly's Brae is a kind of rugged defile through which passes the road
from the town of Castlewellan, which, running westward, divides the
townlands of Ballymagenaghy and Ballymagrehan. It is an entirely
Catholic district, and not at all on the ordinary route by which the
processionists would reach their homes. Yet, in a spirit of aggression,
and well-armed, as usual, with Orange banners waving, drums beating, and
bands playing "Croppies lie down," "The Boyne Water," and similar airs,
this was the district they sought to march through.

It so happened that the proposed hostile parade was not altogether
unexpected. In any case, their approach was heralded by the firing over
"Papish" houses, as the processionists came towards Dolly's Brae. From
the heights above they were seen--my mother being one of the
watchers--in sufficient time to have the people of the immediate
neighbourhood warned of the threatened Orange incursion.

The defenders of Dolly's Brae had no firearms, as their opponents had,
but they gathered up any weapons they could to repel the invaders. The
Orangemen came on, expecting an easy victory. They had got well into the