O’Halloran’s response was an angry declaration that he had assumed office at the President’s request, and with the implied understanding that his policy was to be that of the Administration. If he was not wanted, if his policy was not to be accepted, he would decline to retain the secretaryship, and would leave the President to his own devices. So, he added, would the Secretary of War. Mr. Wagner truculently confirmed this remark of his colleague. O’Halloran’s friends joined uninvited in the debate, which soon became undignified and angry on both sides. It ended by O’Halloran flaming into a simulated but apparently uncontrollable rage and defying the President. An Irish regiment, which had left New York for Washington in suspicious proximity to the departure of “Patsy” and the Irish members of Congress after their conference in that city, had that morning arrived at Washington and was encamped on the Mall. O’Halloran begged the President to take notice of this regiment’s presence, and of the fact, hitherto not mentioned, that twenty thousand more armed men of the same race and actuated by the same spirit were, under his orders, _en route_ for the capital. They were his followers. They would obey him. He would see if the Administration could safely deny its promises to him, and fail to sustain him in whatever course he saw fit to undertake. “When you send for me next on such an errand as this, I will bring them with me,” he shouted. Turning his back on the President, he strode out of the White House, followed by his friends, who had been at no pains to conceal their hearty approval of his defiance and his threat. O’Halloran proceeded straight to the Irish camp on the Mall. The President, summoning a public carriage, whose movements would attract no attention, drove to the residence of the Ex-Secretary of State. A few other friends and prominent men were called in. While they were debating what steps should be pursued under the new circumstances which had arisen, information reached them that two more bodies of men had arrived at the Pennsylvania station, one, like the regiment then on the Mall, unquestionably Irish, the other as indubitably composed of German and Austrian socialists. They were marching in a certain order and discipline to join the body already in the city. Other messengers brought the news that O’Halloran was in close and secret conference with the officer commanding the regiment then in camp on the Mall.