We had gained when ye martyred them!
It is probably by the romance of his last hours, however, that he will be most remembered.
"Late on Wednesday night," as Mr. Stoker, the Grafton Street jeweller already mentioned, told me the story, "just as I was about to go home, suddenly a taxi stopped at the shop door, and a beautiful young woman stepped out and asked me to show her some wedding-rings—'the best,' as she put it, 'that money could buy.'
"She had a thick veil, but I could see that her eyes were red with weeping, and, noticing continued convulsive sobs as she spoke, I ventured to ask her the reason.
"It was then that she revealed the terrible tragedy she was about to suffer.
"'I am poor Joe Plunkett's—the rebel's—fiancée,' she said, 'and we are to be married in prison to-morrow morning, an hour before his execution.'
"I tell you it was the most pathetic thing I had ever heard in my life," continued the jeweller; "and I felt inclined to break down myself when she added: 'Oh! I can't tell you how I love him and how he loves me; we belong to each other, and even if we are only to be together for a single hour I mean to marry him in spite of everybody, in order to bear his name through life.'"
The young woman at once stepped into the same category as Sarah Curran, poor Robert Emmet's sweetheart, in the heart of everyone in Dublin as the story went round like lightning, but no one knew who she was until the next day, when we heard that she was Grace Gifford, the beautiful and gifted young art student whose portrait by William Orpen, entitled "Young Ireland," had won the admiration of all London a few years before.
Not all the character and talent and romance of these leaders, however, would have been sufficient to launch Ireland into open rebellion had there not been some concrete grievance as well which gave their words objective worth.