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 a shadow of resistance, at Larne,—disembarked the guns, and marched off to Dublin with them. Meantime the wires had been humming, and Dublin Castle was on the alert. At Clontarf, in the outskirts of the city, the Volunteers, marching with unloaded rifles, were met by a combined force of police and soldiers. A parley took place. The Government's official, Harrel, demanded the surrender of the rifles; the Volunteer leaders refused. Harrel ordered the police to take the rifles. Some of the police refused, and the remainder acted with evident reluctance, an unheard-of thing in Ireland, but a symptom of the general perception of the deliberate favoritism shown by the Government to the Ulstermen as compared with the Irish Volunteers. The soldiers, a company of the King's Own Scottish Borderers, were then ordered to charge the Volunteers with fixed bayonets. Some Volunteers were stabbed, and a massacre seemed inevitable, when a fresh parley was entered upon. By the time it was over, Harrel discovered that only the front rank of the Volunteers still stood their ground in front of him; the remainder, in obedience to a rapidly disseminated order, "Save the guns," had executed a strategic retirement. Harrel then drew off his force, and the remnant of the Volunteers completed their march unmolested, no guns having been lost.

As the soldiers marched back to the barracks, the Dublin populace assailed them with curses and later with stones. The troops retaliated with a series of bayonet-charges, which further enraged the crowd, in which wild rumors of the fight at Clontarf had spread. The soldiers were undoubtedly peppered pretty severely with stones; but the assailants were all unarmed, and were largely composed of women and children. There was no justification whatever for the action taken by the soldiery. They turned and fired at the crowd without giving any warning, without even firing a preliminary volley over their heads. Four people were killed, one man, two women, one boy. Several others were wounded, of whom one subsequently died, Nobody was punished; a whitewashing inquiry was held, but meantime the Scottish borderers had "distinguished themselves" by getting wiped out in the retreat from Mons, and no disciplinary measures were taken. Harrel, the assistant commissioner of the Dublin police, who had taken it upon himself to call out the soldiers in the first instance, was made a temporary scapegoat; but he is now again in the service of the Government in Ireland, helping in the 7