they advanced half way, when clamorous sounds and shouts of discord met their ears; having ordered the troops to follow, the General and his aid-de-camp sprang forward and attained the summit, where, alas! no troops awaited their coming.
Fired with impetuosity and an overheated zeal, impatient of delay, Major Harrold, in opposition to the commands of his General, had advanced to meet the combatants;—not perceiving the numbers of rebels, secreted in every direction, in a thickly-set country, beneath hedges of furze and brambles, this ill-judged officer had precipitated himself with the troops under his command into the very abyss of destruction.
The Irish peasantry, in all their ferocity of character, headed by leaders bold, daring, and outrageous as themselves, might well, in the horrid picture they then presented, have realised what the imagination might have conceived of the untamed savage or beast of prey precipitating with equal brutality on their victim.
What a scene of confusion, desperation, and carnage was destined to meet the eye of the General! The wild, infuriated Irish, thronging with their long terrific pikes, had broken the ranks of those brave soldiers, so worthy of a better fate; the ground
