‘You are right, Godfrey,’ interrupted Malachy, with the utmost familiarity, ‘I did indeed mistake you for another person.’ ‘I thought as much,’ said Emmet, ‘and let us now rejoice that our cause, the noblest in which man was ever engaged, has received the acquisition of a pure spirit, who feels indignant at our wrongs, and who burns to avenge them.’ After this conference, many of his partisans slunk away, and declined all farther participation in the affair; others, however, and those the majority, resolutely determined to follow the fortunes of their beloved leader, and declared that they would not desert him although they advanced with the certainty of utter destruction to themselves or their cause. The die was cast, and all further reflection was repelled by the ardour and firmness of resolution. Fortune, on this occasion, not to be accused of fickleness, seems never, from his first embarking on this desperate adventure, to have been for a single moment, auspicious to the devoted Emmet. His negociation with Dwyer had failed, and a plan, even more specious, and on which he now grounded the most sanguine hopes of success, proved equally fallacious. A part of the plan of general attack determined upon, was to force the batteries and stores at the mouth of the harbour of Dublin, by the assistance of those working people from the counties of Wicklow and Wexford, who in the months of June and July, repair in considerable numbers, for the purpose of hay-making, to the neighbourhood of Dublin. The minds of this class of men appeared by no means more softened, nor their passions less alive to every motive of discontent, whether real or imaginary, than they were at the period of the rebellion in 1798, which they had principally supported; and the daring conduct of which had prepared and habituated them for similar encounters; their enmities were fierce and vehement; their courage and resolution undoubted; it was therefore natural that they should be selected as most useful and valuable auxiliaries. For some time they had manifested the most cordial concurrence; but on the 22d of July, the day before that appointed for action, they, for some cause unknown, formally declared their abandonment of the design. They did not, however, accompany their refusal with any discovery of the plot. For some days prior to the 23d of July, Emmet passed entirely in his depot, reposing at night on a mattress thrown upon the ground, amid the implements of death which he had there collected.