were employed throughout that day moulding the Chief Warder’s potatoes; we enjoyed the work; and we enjoyed it none the less because of the new warder under whom we were placed. This warder had made his first appearance, as far as I was concerned, the previous day. The mask he wore was not sour, but melancholy; and that in itself was a great difference. His voice, too, suggested possibilities. It was southern, and somewhere muffled in its official brevity a human quality echoed. I had heard that quality instantly when, the previous day, he came into my cell to bid me hasten as he had others to attend to besides myself. I had not hastened; but, quite deliberately, I had stood and looked at him. “’Tis queer criminals you have these times, warder,” I said. I looked at him; and he looked at me. Then he went to the door, looked up and down the passage, and returned to me. “Faith, you’re right, sir,” he said. “’Tis a queer sort of criminals these times.” It would be hard to express all that he managed to convey in those few words. Perhaps the melancholy mask he wore was all the more melancholy because of the thoughts he could not utter. Strange pass for a man when his hand is bought against his fellow-countrymen; and strangest of all when his heart is not bought with his hand. We had no cause to regret our warder during that day’s labour; but I am sure he was not as sorry for us as I was for him.
He was with us on Sunday also. It being Sunday, we only received one hour’s exercise during the morning; and as the Chief Warder and his other officials had gone to Mass the warder was in sole charge of us. Therefore we all had exercise together; and when I entered the yard I saw that my guess of Friday was correct, for there was P. J. D. already before me. He threw up his hand in welcome, and a smile lit over his face. I passed over and walked behind him.
There were many new faces there. There were about sixteen or seventeen of us. Some were in prison clothes.
Some had come into conflict with English troops with whom they had been stationed.
I turned to note the others in civilian clothes. One was an elderly man, with grey beard and majesterial manner: I never found out who he was. The man, however, who struck me most walked just ahead of P. J. D. Tall and athletic of build, he strode round and round the path, the very embodiment of wrath. His face, when I caught a side glance of it as he turned each bend, was black and lowering. Once as we came round the corner that served so well for our quick interchanges, he turned about, took a quick glance at the warder’s retreating back, and shook his fist at the prison and all it signified, and said: “By God, but there’ll be a big judgment to pay for all this yet.” Then he strode on again, striking his heels on the ground. He had probably just completed his first night in jail; and his emotion had not yet become transmuted into something more settled and grim. “Keep your heart up, man, keep your heart up,” I heard P. J. D. whisper. “There’s plenty of time before all of us.”
VII.
When I was wakened the following morning I was informed that I had to be ready for removal in an hour’s time. The Chief Warder did not know where I was to go, only that at six a guard of soldiers would come for me. It was his opinion that I was to be taken for the courtsmartial in Dublin. That meant anything; it meant, to be more precise, whatever the police desired or intended, for the reign of terror was abroad in the land, and every man’s fate was decreed by whatever the police had decided would make an appropriate chapter in his leabhran at Dublin Castle, without other evidence than the evidence of the compilers. During those days that man was safest who was permitted to remain in any one place for a length of time, for presumably the present orgy of blood and long sentences, of courtsmartial, and authority on its war-steed champing the ground, would begin to pall. Nevertheless, I welcomed the change. Anything seemed better than inaction. It was better to go out and take one’s fate than to stay skulking in a cell. My only anxiety was for my wife, who would know nothing of my removal, and from whom it seemed decided to withhold all knowledge of me.