The boys of Kildare, who were the first, casting distrust aside, to take the field, had been ground too low to allow the lamp of patriotism to burn steadily. After an abortive effort of a few days they sued for mercy. Slaves of the soil, hewers of wood and drawers of water, they were doomed to be; their leaders saw it now, and roundly told them so, and they retorted on their leaders. Both indeed were sadly below the mark. If those who endeavoured to command were unable to manage their rabble, the latter were no better than the most innocent of savages. In presence of the foe they forgot the little drilling they had learned, danced forward like children, with hats on pikes and wild gestures of defiance, and tumbled pellmell over each other, hit or alarmed at the first blare of musketry. The business of the disciplined cohorts was simply to stand quiet until the gibbering simpletons advanced to an easy distance; then to cut them down as the sickle mows the corn, in serried heaps upon the furrows. The boys of Kildare sued for mercy, and were graciously informed that if they would come to the Gibbet-Rath on the Curragh, within given hours on a certain day, and there deliver up all weapons of offence, they might be permitted to return to bondage and be happy. They came, having been assured that General Dundas had received permission from the Castle to show clemency. Thirteen cartloads of pikes were delivered on the plain. General Duff, who, assisted by the colonel of the Foxhunters, was acting for Dundas, bade the rebels make of these a heap, and confessing on their knees their insolence and wickedness, beg the King's pardon humbly. The craven wretches obeyed, for no vestige of courage was left in them. Bereft even of the courage to die, they kneeled, praying that the agony of death might be past. They kneeled, with misery too intense for speech, on the great plain, with heads bowed and hands clutched together--a spectacle of human abjectness harrowing enough to have made the angels weep. 'Charge!' shouted General Duff, 'and spare no rebel!'