the, apparently, vain fight for self-government.

To his horror that day he met Frank Owen O'Connell, one of the most
notorious of all the younger agitators, in the main street of the
little village.

O'Connell's back sliding had been one of Father Cahill's bitterest
regrets. He had closed O'Connell's father's eyes in death and had
taken care of the boy as well as he could. But at the age of fifteen
the youth left the village, that had so many wretched memories of
hardship and struggle, and worked his way to Dublin. It was many
years before Father Cahill heard of him again. He had developed
meanwhile into one of the most daring of all the fervid speakers in
the sacred Cause of Liberty. Many were the stories told of his
narrow escapes from death and imprisonment. He always had the people
on his side, and once away from the hunt, he would hide in caves, or
in mountains, until the hue and cry was over, and then appear in
some totally unexpected town and call on the people to act in the
name of Freedom.

And that was exactly what happened on this particular day. He had
suddenly appeared in the town he was born in and called a meeting on
St. Kernan's Hill that afternoon.

It was this meeting Father Cahill was determined to stop by every
means in his power.

He could hardly believe that this tall, bronzed, powerful young man
was the Frank O'Connell he had watched about the village, as a boy--
pale, dejected, and with but little of the fire of life in him. Now