No sooner said than done. Goaded by pikes the animals rushed headlong into the gulf, and the rebels, crossing the palpitating bridge, crept unperceived into the town, which was by this time a mass of flame. The disaffected inhabitants picked off the soldiery from their windows; fired their own houses to burn them out when the royalists sought protection there; dragged away frieze-coated bodies, that the carnage might not discourage the survivors; while women and young girls, in the heroism born of excitement, ran hither and thither among the bullets, administering new courage in the welcome shape of whisky. The streets were so involved in smoke that the yeomen could not perceive the rebels till they felt their pikes within their flesh. The whirling flame flared in such a sheet as to unite in a seething arch over their heads--singeing the bearskin of their caps, scorching their very hair and eyelashes. After a conflict wherein for three hours each inch was savagely disputed, the loyalists found themselves pushed backwards into the central square. 'Victory!' hallooed the insurgents--just a little bit too soon. A heavy discharge from the market-house made them waver. Profiting by their recoil, cavalry and infantry rallied. Their discipline stood them in good stead at the turning of the tide. They dashed forward; drove the huge wave in a vast roll before them, which ebbed across the bridge, down the straight street, away out of the town--a turbulent maelstrom of discomfited fugitives. Though the rebels were for the time repulsed, it was certain that they would return again on the morrow and sweep the place clean by sheer weight of numbers. The little garrison was weakened by half its strength. The loyalists, unwitting of the insidious purpose of Lord Clare, loudly blamed the executive for leaving so inadequate a force to battle with so immense a mob. It was a pernicious want of forethought which would cost many lives. A strong force of regulars, they complained, and this Hurry would be over in two days at most. Guileless loyalists of Enniscorthy! After all the labour of incubation, it was not fitting that the trouble should be too brief. The chancellor's twitter of conscience was past, and his hand was steady on the plough again, to force it through roots and stones. The iron, being drawn, might not be sheathed again before it had cut into the writhing soul of Erin ineffaceably. She must remember the Hurry to the end of her existence, as an awful sample of the terrors which would fall even yet more heavily upon her if she should dare again to rouse the wrath of her elder sister. Consistently, therefore, till the lesson was complete, two hundred regulars or so were always expected to cope with two thousand rebels; and, even with those odds against them, the former, more frequently than not, obtained the upper hand. In the present instance, however, it was not so; for it was clear that the loyalists must desert the town or be killed to a man.