In 1802 Mr. Teeling was liberated, and after a time spent with Charles, now married to Catherine Carolan, and settled at the Naul, near Balbriggan, he made a home for his wife and girls in Belfast. Though an elderly man—older than his years, indeed, from the hardships of his imprisonment—he made a characteristically gallant effort to make a new start in life. His sons, George and Charles and Luke, helped as far as they could to re-establish the family fortunes, but the times were against them. George and Luke went finally to America and died there. On a certain day in 1822 a letter arrived, re-directed from Belfast to Castlecomer, where Mr. and Mrs. Teeling and their unmarried daughters, Mary and Milly, had gone on a visit to Charles and his family. It was in an unknown hand-writing, and was signed by an unknown correspondent, William Cullen, from the City of Natchez, State of Mississippi. It contained the sad tidings of the death of George, and enclosed a ring which had been given to Bartle by Hoche, and to George by Bartle on the eve of his execution. It was Mary Teeling’s destiny to read the letter containing the news of her son’s death, by the coffin which contained the mortal remains of her husband. In the bitterness of her grief her wifely devotion could find comfort in the knowledge that this last earthly sorrow had been spared her beloved Luke—and that from the heavenly vantage ground whence he now looked, it was turned for him into a joy. The few remaining years of Mary Teeling’s life were spent with Charles and his wife and little ones. And it is to the loving memories of these years, cherished by her grandson Bartholomew, that we owe the vivid portrait of her which I have borrowed to adorn my pages. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE WIVES OF ’NINETY-EIGHT ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Wife of Theobald Wolfe Tone MATILDA TONE _née_ WITHERINGTON (1769-1849)[53] “I thought, O my Love! you were so— As the moon is, or sun on a fountain. And I thought after that you were snow, The cold snow on top of a mountain; And I thought after that, you were more Like God’s grace shining to find me, Or the bright star of knowledge before, And the star of knowledge behind me.” —Hyde’s “Love Songs of Connacht.” Footnote 53: _Authorities_: “Autobiography of Wolfe Tone,” edited by R. Barry O’Brien; Madden’s “United Irishmen,” Second Series, Second Edition, 1848.