They spent much of their time drinking whisky and quarrelling among themselves, but there were always plenty of sympathisers to give the alarm, and the Governor of Charlemont had to be satisfied with driving them back into their own province, where they wandered about as proclaimed traitors. Englishmen's dwellings were burned, while the Irish were spared. Nangle was soon killed in an attempt to storm Lord Aungier's house at Longford, but the band was not broken up. Thomas Viscount Dillon, who had been restored to his estate in the same district, warned his tenants against sheltering Costello, who had been his companion-in-arms, but offered to intercede for him if he would come under his protection. Ormonde's rule was to give no pardon for nothing, and if Costello expected mercy, he would have to bring some fellow-outlaw to justice, 'especially one Hill and one Plunket, who lately committed great outrages in the north and are come into Connaught.' Costello preferred ordering all Lord Dillon's Mayo tenants to leave their farms. This warning was given in August, and on a late November night Costello with thirty men burned Mr. Ormsby's house at Castlemore, 'having entered by means of a turf stack placed against the outside of the bawn.' All the native population sympathised with him, but the soldiers kept up a hot pursuit. Like the great Sicilian brigand in our own times, he never slept within two miles of the spot where he supped, nor lay two nights running in the same place. But he could always get a party together when the soldiers' backs were turned, and he burned seven or eight villages within three weeks of the Castlemore exploit. Ormonde retaliated by quartering troops on the Irish inhabitants and ordering the apprehension of the 'Popish titulary clergy residing in those parts so infested by the Tories,' who had already been warned by the Lord President that they would be held responsible for their flocks. At last one evening at the beginning of March, Costello, driven to desperation or made rash by impunity, met Captain Theobald Dillon in the open field and was shot dead at the first fire. He had about forty men with him, who all escaped in the darkness. His head was sent to Dublin and stuck upon St. James's Gate with the face towards Connaught. Nangle's had been mouldering there for several months. But other Tories carried on the war in many different districts, and informers were deterred from earning blood-money by threats, which were sometimes acted on, of having their tongues cut out. The banditti were no doubt a grievous burden to the people, and in one case, as a noted outlaw stooped to enter a boat in Connaught, the ferryman cut off his head with a hatchet. 'This honest Charon,' wrote Williamson's correspondent, 'was an Irishman as well as the Tory,' and refused the reward, saying that the honour of the action was enough.[82] [Sidenote: Ossory and Robartes, 1669.]