The autumn of 1803 marked the close of Mary McCracken’s pathetic romance. In October of that year Russell, who had come over from France, in the early summer to assist Robert Emmet, and who had undertaken, with the faithful Jamie Hope, to rouse the North to a new stand for freedom, was taken prisoner in Dublin, and carried back in chains to Downpatrick to be tried for his life. Once more Mary McCracken, stifling the pain of her wounded heart, made superhuman efforts to save her doomed friend. During the weeks when he was in hiding she and her sister had already visited him, and provided him with funds for his journey to Dublin. When he was taken, the two sisters pledged their credit to the last penny, to raise the necessary money for his defence. It was Mary’s earnest desire to go to Downpatrick to be present at the trial, and only the representations of her family prevented her. On the eve of the trial she received a letter from Russell. It was all the reward her faithful heart obtained for the years of silent love it had lavished on the writer—but perhaps those words of farewell from the condemned cell in Downpatrick seemed to her better worth treasuring than the love letters of happier women. It is to Mary McCracken that we owe the record of Russell’s most noble and touching “Speech from the Dock.” For she and her sister sent Hughes, a clerk of their brother John’s, to take notes in court of his address. And when the scaffold had done its work, and the gallant form lay mangled in its shadow, it was she who gave it, in the sacred soil of Downpatrick, the tomb, where with the “Three Wonder Working Saints of Erin,” Patrick, Brigid and Columcille, it awaits the Resurrection: “The grave of Russell.” * * * * * Among the witnesses at the Russell trial there figured prominently a certain Patrick Lynch, and the mention of his name will serve as an introduction to our account of some of the various interests with which Mary McCracken filled her life. There still remained the long span of sixty-three years, before she was summoned to join the dear ones, to whose love the years of her youth had been dedicated. These sixty-three years were full of service to the country for which _they_ had given their lives.