'What of the people?' he asked somewhat abruptly; for he knew more than he liked about Lake's plans, and feared lest the obloquy which must attend them should be pinned to the new _régime_. 'The people!' echoed his companion, in a tone which spoke volumes--'the people! Ah, well! They've offended the King, and are having a hard time of it. To-morrow they will have a very hard time indeed, but no worse than they deserve; for by nightfall, if all goes well--why should it go ill?--a few hours hence, Wexford and Enniscorthy will be taken, the camp at Vinegar Hill will be a Golgotha--this deplorable folly will be at an end.' Lord Cornwallis gave a sigh of relief. He had come expecting to see unpleasant sights, to be for the nonce a bandager instead of a carver of wounds. If the chancellor spoke truly, then was he indeed in luck, for the horrors attending this 'Golgotha,' as his companion picturesquely put it, would naturally be considered to belong to Lord Camden's vice-royalty, not his. The cavalcade which had been rattling along came to a standstill. The Liberty-rangers, with oaths and curses, were striving to force a passage through a kneeling crowd which occupied the way; but the peasants who formed the crowd seemed to have no feeling as they knelt there in the middle of the road, with hats off and heads bowed down. Vainly were the horses urged, vainly did the postilions, with artful flips of their long knotted lashes, strive to tickle into sensitiveness the soft bare arms of girls--their white necks, from which the hair was braided. They knelt there and moved not. Lord Cornwallis looked out at the spectacle in surprise, and lowered the window-glass with a bang to bid the postilions respect the sex, in terms of indignant remonstrance. What singular people! So silent; they might be stone. His ear caught a distant wailing, very faint--a long way off--and a peculiar sound which recalled long-forgotten memories of youth. The falling of a flail--yes, that was it. A lightning-flash, of the past revealed to his mind's eye a warm-coloured, familiar threshing-floor, in which he used to play ere he grew hardened by war's vicissitudes. He remembered, as though it were yesterday, the chequered sunlight on the grain, the merry hum of life, the stalwart fellows raising their brawny arms in clock-like rhythm. He heard again the buzz of insects, the booming of gauze-winged beetles along the hedgerows; the exhilarating murmur which sings of teeming nature--of glorious summer. Why were these peasants turned to stone? Lord Clare, forgetting himself, craned out of his window, and presumed at the very start to counter-order his chief's commands. 'Go on!' he screamed. 'Get through this riff-raff!' Lord Cornwallis roughly bade him hold his peace. 'It's only a flogging,' the chancellor apologised.