Towards Kilkenny they therefore took their way, haranguing the people in soul-stirring addresses as they proceeded. At Enniscorthy and at Graigue-na-mana their appeals were responded to with fervent enthusiasm; they called on the people to form themselves into organized bodies, and prepare to co-operate with the insurgents who were shortly to unfurl their banner beneath the shadow of St. Canice's; and the crowds who hung on their words vowed their determination to do so. But in Kilkenny, as in every town they visited, the patriot leaders found the greatest disinclination to take the initiative in the holy war. There as elsewhere the people felt no unwillingness to fight; but they knew they were ill prepared for such an emergency, and fancied the first blow might be struck more effectively elsewhere. "Who will draw the first blood?" asked Finton Lalor in the last number of the _Felon_; and the question was a pertinent one; there was a decided reluctance to draw it. It is far from our intention to cast the slightest reflection on the spirit or courage of the nationalists of 1848. We know that it was no selfish regard for their own safety made the leaders in Wexford, Kilkenny, and elsewhere, shrink from counselling an immediate outbreak in their localities; the people, as well as the men who led them, looked forward to the rising of the harvest moon, and the cutting of their crops, as the precursors of the herald that was to summon them to aims. Their state of organization was lamentably deficient; anticipating a month of quiet preparation, they had neglected to procure arms up to the date of O'Brien's arrival, and a few weeks would at least be required to complete their arrangements. In Kilkenny, for instance, not one in every eight of the clubmen possessed a musket, and even their supply of pikes was miserably small. But they were ready to do all that in them lay; and when O'Brien, Dillon, and Meagher quitted Kilkenny on Monday, July 24th, they went in pursuance of an arrangement which was to bring them back to the city of the Nore before the lapse of a week. They were to drive into Tipperary, visit Carrick, Clonmel, and Cashel, and summon the people of those towns to arms. Then, after the lapse of a few days, they were to return at the head of their followers to Kilkenny, call out the clubs, barricade the streets, and from the Council Chambers of the Corporation issue the first Revolutionary Edict to the country. They hoped that a week later the signal fires of insurrection would be blazing from every hill-top in Ireland; and that the sunlight of freedom, for which so many generations of patriots had yearned, would soon flood glebe and town, the heather-clad mountains, and pleasant vales of Innisfail. _Diis aliter visum_; the vision that glittered before their longing eyes melted away with the smoke of the first insurgent shot; and instead of the laurel of the conqueror they were decked with the martyr's palm.