suddenly got an inspiration.  He had every single button, brace buttons and all, cut off the prisoners’ trousers.  Then the men had perforce, for decency’s sake, to hold their trousers together with their hands, and I defy any one similarly situated to run more than a yard or two.  The prisoners were all paraded in the Castle yard next day, and I walked out amongst them.  As they had been up all night in very heavy rain, they all looked very forlorn and miserable.  The Castle gates were shut that day, for the first time in the memory of the oldest inhabitant, and they remained shut for four days.  I cannot remember the date when the prisoners were paraded, but I am absolutely certain as to one point:  it was Shrove Tuesday, 1867, the day on which so many marriages are celebrated amongst country-folk in Ireland.  Dublin was seething with unrest, so on that very afternoon my father and mother drove very slowly, quite alone, without an Aide-de-Camp or escort, in a carriage-and-four with outriders, through all the poorest quarters in Dublin.  They were well received, and there was no hostile demonstration whatever.  The idea of the slow drive through the slums was my mother’s.  She wished to show that though the Castle gates were closed, she and my father were not afraid.  I saw her on her return, when she was looking very pale and drawn, but I was too young to realise what the strain must have been.  My mother’s courage was loudly praised, but I think that my friends O’Connor and little Byrne, the postilions, also deserve quite a good mark, for they ran the same amount of risk, and they were no entirely free agents in the matter, as my father and mother were.

Dr. Hatchell, who attended us all, had been physician to countless Viceroys and their families, and was a very well-known figure in Dublin.  He was a jolly little red-faced man with a terrific brogue.  There was a great epidemic of lawlessness in Dublin at that time.  Many people were waylaid and stripped of their valuables in dark suburban streets.  Dr. Hatchell was returning from a round of professional visits in the suburbs one evening, when his carriage was stopped by two men, who seized the horses’ heads.  One of the men came round to the carriage door.

“We know you, Dr. Hatchell, so you had better hand over your watch and money quietly.”  “You know me,” answered the merry little doctor, with his tremendous brogue, “so no doubt you would like me to prescribe for you.  I’ll do it with all the pleasure in life.  Saltpetre is a grand drug, and I often order it for my patients.  Sulphur is the finest thing in the world for the blood, and charcoal is an elegant disinfectant.  By a great piece of luck, I have all these drugs with me in the carriage, but”—­and he suddenly covered the man with his revolver—­“they are all mixed up together, and there is the least taste in life of lead in front of them, and by God! you’ll get it through you if you don’t clear out of that.”  The men decamped immediately.