Page:Life of John Boyle O'Reilly.djvu/62

28 President. Why were you so confidential with some of the civilians you met at Fortune's for the first time, and not with all? And what was the mysterious conversation about?

Witness. It was the civilians proposed to go to Doyle's and it was they who held the conversation. I do not remember any of the songs that were sung at Bergin's. Davis was a low-sized man whose hair was cut like a soldier's. When the prisoner told me to go to the public houses at night, he used to say, "Go to such a house and you will meet John there, and tell him I am on duty."

President. Who was John?

Witness. Devoy.

President. Then Devoy was a great friend of the prisoner?

Witness. He appeared to be.

President. Now answer a direct question: Were the songs sung Fenian songs?

Witness. No, sir; they were not.

Prisoner. Were the songs chiefly love songs?

Witness. I don't know.

Prisoner. Did I ever tell you Devoy was an old friend of my family?

Witness. No, he did not. John O'Reilly never spoke to me about Fenianism, and I never heard Fenian songs in his company.

President. Recollect what you say: Did you not swear that prisoner told you he was a Fenian?

Witness. He said he was one at Cahir.

President. How do you know what a Fenian song is?

Witness. I don't know. I suppose they are Irish songs.

Prisoner. Did you not state to the President that I told you I had been a member of the Fenian Brotherhood while I was at Cahir?

Witness. Yes, that you had been a Fenian at Cahir.

The unprejudiced reader, accustomed to the rigid impartiality of an American court, will be surprised at the hardly concealed hostility of this court-martial president toward his prisoner. Private MacDonald's testimony is so favorable to the accused that it does not please the Court at all. The President accordingly reminds him that he is "under oath," sneers at his refusal to "identify" men whom he does not know, and makes it generally clear to succeeding witnesses that evidence tending to prove the prisoner's innocence is not of the kind wanted in that, court.

The next witness was, Tenth Hussars:

I remember the evening of the 1st January, last. I was in the "Two