All these, and about fifty thousand more shouts of a similar character, burst forth from the maddened mob around. All mobs are alike. Any one who has ever seen a mob in a row can understand the action of this particular one. They gathered thick and fast around him. They yelled. They howled. The music of the national anthem was drowned in that wild uproar. They pressed close to him, and the savage eyes that glared on him menaced him with something little less than death itself. And what did he do? He? Why he bore himself splendidly. As the row began, he rose slowly, holding his stick, which I now saw to be a knotted staff of formidable proportions, and at length reared his figure to its full height. It was a tall and majestic figure which he revealed--thin, yet sinewy, and towering over the heads of the roaring mob around him. He confronted them all with a dark frown on his brow, and blazing eyes. "Ye beggars!" he cried. "Come on--the whole pack of ye! A Fenian, ye say? That's thrue for you. Ye've got one, an' ye'll find him a tough customer! Come on--the whole thousand of ye!" And saying this, he swung his big, formidable knotted stick about his head. Those nearest him started back, but the crowd behind rushed forward. The row increased. The people in the reserved seats in front looked around with anxious eyes, not knowing what was going on. The crowd yelled and hooted. It surged nearer. A moment more and the tall figure would go down. Now, I'm a loyal man. None more so. I'm an officer and a gentleman. I'm ready at any moment to lay down my life for the queen and the rest of the royal family. I'm ready to pitch into the Fenians on any proper occasion, and all that. But somehow this didn't seem to me to be the proper occasion. It was not a Fenian that I saw. It was an elderly gentleman; so sensitive, that but a few minutes before he had been struggling with his tears; so lion-hearted, that now he drew himself up and faced a roaring, howling mob of enemies--calmly, unflinchingly--hurling desperate defiance at them. And was that the sort of thing that I could stand? What! to see one man attacked by hundreds--a man like that, too--an old man, alone, with nothing to sustain him but his own invincible pluck? Pooh! what's the use of talking? I am an officer and a gentleman, and as such it would have been a foul disgrace to me if I had been capable of standing there quietly and looking at the old man at the mercies of the mob. But, as it happened, I did nothing of the kind. On the contrary, I sprang forward and stood by the side of the old man.