'Gentlemen, you are my prisoners!' Major Sirr said, with a portentous sword-wave. 'It's no good resisting. I'm glad to see you know better than to resist. Here is my warrant--made out in all your names. We will go, if you please, in the first instance to Castle-yard; then to Kilmainham, where you'll meet your friends.' He smiled at Tom Emmett with a sinister smile, and stirred the fluttering fragments of paper with his swordpoint. 'What's this?' he said, the tuft of eyebrows wrinkling down his nose. 'I know what it is--a list of your precious society, I dare say. Ye're mighty fond of waging war on paper, gentlemen! Look here now! All we want to know of ye we do know--or could speedily learn. I might have those bits picked up and glued together. But I won't, for 'tisn't worth my while. There! Come, gentlemen, march! Dease--where's Dease? I saw him but now. We mustn't lose him, for he's a docthor, and Kilmainham's terrible full of sick! Dease, where are yez? I have him on the list.' But the delegate who answered to the name of Dease had no intention of visiting Kilmainham. Upon the first entrance of Sirr, he had withdrawn in the confusion to an upper room, and making use of his surgical knowledge, had severed the femoral artery. When the soldiers found him he was dying; which aggravated Sirr no little, who was proud of his masterly treatment of the hornet's nest. 'Come, put out a nimble leg!' he cried crossly. 'We've parleyed too long. To business! to business!' Between a double file of soldiers the delegates were marched off, down several streets, to Castle-yard, while the populace looked on, dull-browed. They attempted no rescue. It is probable that few realised what band it was which was being thus openly conducted to its fate (many such bands passed along Dublin streets)--that few were aware that in this little knot were centred the hopes of deliverance for which all were praying. They were gone. Only Robert Emmett and Major Sirr were left behind. 'Am I to go with you? I will go,' Robert said. The major looked at him, and gave way to a sepulchral cachinnation. Then by his action he belied the language he had used just now. With the greatest care and deliberation he stooped and picked up the torn scraps of paper. When they were bestowed to his satisfaction in a wallet, he looked at Robert and laughed again, wrinkling his sinister eyebrow tuft: 'Adieu, my lad! and good luck!' he grunted. 'No, no! We don't want you yet, my little cockatrice! All in good time--when ye're fledged! Good-bye! or rather _au revoir!_' CHAPTER VIII. MR. CURRAN LEAVES PARLIAMENT.