And talking of “Sisters” reminds us of the striking fact that it was in the prisons of the United Irishmen, our Irish Sisters of Charity had, in a certain sense, their origin. In the letters of Mr. Luke Teeling to his wife, we find frequent mention of a Miss Alicia Walsh, who came with her aunt, Ally Lynch, of Drogheda (Mrs. Teeling’s sister) to visit him in his prison at Carrickfergus. “Ally Walsh is an uncommonly fine girl,” he notes of her approvingly. Many a tongue was to echo Mr. Teeling’s praise in the after-days when “Ally Walsh,” the first companion of Mary Aikenhead, had become the celebrated Mother Catherine of the Gardiner Street Convent. To learn more of her I must refer my readers to Mrs. Atkinson’s “Mary Aikenhead.” I shall content myself here with borrowing Mrs. Atkinson’s account of her experiences in ’Ninety-Eight. “During the rebellion of 1798, she went from prison to prison at much personal risk, to carry messages from friends, or to console the inmates who were the objects of her deepest sympathy. Some of her nearest and dearest relatives[96] suffered greatly, not only from the confiscation and unjust oppression, but also from barbarous bodily tortures which at that period were commonly inflicted at the will of a licentious soldiery. One of her friends, a young man of exemplary life, was stripped to the waist, tied to a cart, and dragged through the streets of Drogheda, his inhuman executioners flogging him all the way, until at last he fainted under their hands, and was consigned to a prison cell. The first intimation his mother received of the occurrence that had taken place was a demand for old linen to dress her son’s back which was one hideous wound. Footnote 96: The Teelings conspicuously. Her own father, Mr. Walsh, of the Naul, though like Mr. Teeling he had taken no part in the Rising, was ruined by the pillaging and burning tactics of the Orangemen and the Yeomanry. “In the family of a near neighbour at Naul, a circumstance occurred equally characteristic of the time. A young lady was engaged to be married to a gentleman, who having been connected with the insurgents in ’98, was obliged to fly from his home. He took refuge in the house of his intended brother-in-law, who had been forced to join a corps of yeomanry. The fugitive’s track was discovered, the yeomanry were called out, and he, having again taken to flight, was overtaken at a village near Dublin, and hanged from a post in the street by the young man from whose house he had just escaped and who dared not shirk the duty. The poor rebel’s mother never learned the fate that had befallen her son. She was persuaded that he had gone abroad; and up to her death she continued making shirts and knitting stockings, which were sent, as she supposed, in parcels to the refugee in a distant land.”