I returned to my confidants of the first conference and "reported progress." It was rather difficult to find a trusty messenger. I volunteered to go myself, but they would not hear of it. At last a man who could be depended on was obtained, and, armed with certain passwords (unintelligible except to those for whom they were intended) he left to go through Roscommon and Westmeath into Tipperary by Borrisokane and Nenagh. Simultaneously with this, agents went abroad in the country, and I, by the advice of the local leaders, went to lodge under Benbulben in the character of a Dublin student in search of health and exercise during the summer vacation. Within a week we expected to be openly arrayed against the authorities, and no man that I saw shrank from the prospect. From my lodgings under Benbulben I made a visit to Bundoran to meet some friends from Donegal who were anxious to consult me as to the state of the county. By an odd chance I lodged in the same house with the stipendiary magistrate, Sir Thomas Blake, and had to go through his bedroom to my own. We met frequently but he was quite unsuspicious. He has, I find since, been dismissed from his office, after an ineffectual search for me through the county, a month from the time we had lived under the same roof. While our messenger had gone south there arrived one from our friends in Scotland. Him I sent back the same night to expedite affairs there. In the meanwhile, on such maps as we had, my friends and I studied the roads and the formation of the country. There is in this part of Ireland a plateau of about twenty-five miles square of broken or mountainous ground. Of this district Ballinamore in Leitrim might be considered the centre; there are but three main roads leading through it--the Boyle road, the Red Lion road, and the Ballysodare road--which could all be easily rendered impassable, passing as they do over rapid streams, through narrow defiles or across extensive marshes. There is no great military depot within the district--Enniskillen, Athlone, and even Castlebar being within the spurs of the mountains. Sligo, its chief town was, as we saw, poorly garrisoned, and yet as a seaport of the second class it contained many things of the greatest use in a military movement--as lead, arms, canvas, tools, money, ships' stores, breadstuffs, types for proclamations and even some small cannon. From three to five thousand men it was calculated, could be well-equipped and could maintain themselves for three months within this district, with tolerable prudence and exertion. Before the time expired we hoped to receive help and officers from abroad, and afterwards to be able to undertake greater things.