There might be bad work that day, but the women had answered: "If WE go they won't hurt YOU!" and they pressed on after the leaders.
At three o'clock O'Connell ascended the hill and stood alone on the great mount.
A cry of greeting went up.
He raised his hand in acknowledgment.
It was strange indeed for him to stand there looking down at the people he had known since childhood.

A thousand conflicting emotions swept through him as he looked at the men and women whom, only a little while ago, it seemed, he had known as children.

THEN he bent to their will.
The son of a peasant, he was amongst the poorest of the poor.

Now he came amongst them to try and lift them from the depths he had risen from himself.
"It is Frankie O'Connell himself," cried a voice.
"Him we knew as a baby," said another.
"Fightin' O'Connell! Hooray for him!" shouted a third.
"Mary's own child standin' up there tall and straight to get us freedom and comfort," crooned an old white-haired woman.
"And broken heads," said another old woman.
"And lyin' in the county-jail himself, mebbe, this night," said a third.
"The Lord be with him," cried a fourth.
"Amen to that," and they reverently crossed themselves.
Again O'Connell raised his hand, this time to command silence.
All the murmurs died away.
O'Connell began--his rich, melodious voice ringing far beyond the farthest limits of the crowd--the music of his Irish brogue making cadences of entreaty and again lashing the people into fury at the memory of Ireland's wrongs.
"Irish men and women, we are met here to-day in the sight of God and in defiance of the English government," (groans and hisses), "to clasp hands, to unite our thoughts and to nerve our bodies to the supreme effort of bringing hope to despair, freedom to slavery, prosperity to the land and happiness to our homes." (Loud applause.) "Too long have our forefathers lived under the yoke of the oppressor.

Too long have our old been buried in paupers' graves afther lives of misery no other counthry in the wurrld can equal.