The Fenian leaders once safe, they scattered, and young William Allen, whose one thought had been for his chiefs, seeing them safe, fired his revolver in the air, for he would not shed blood in his own defence.

Disarmed by his own act, he was set on by the police, brutally struck down, kicked and stoned, and was dragged off to gaol, faint and bleeding, to meet there some of his comrades in much the same plight as himself.

Then Manchester went mad, and race-passions flared up into flame; no Irish workman was safe in a crowd of Englishmen, no Englishman safe in the Irish quarter.

The friends of the prisoners besieged "Lawyer Roberts's" house, praying his aid, and he threw his whole fiery soul into their defence.

The man who had fired the accidentally fatal shot was safely out of the way, and none of the others had hurt a human being.