han was imagined. I
mentioned that Liberty Hall had been blown up, and that the garrison had
either surrendered or been killed. He replied that a gunboat had that
morning come up the river and had blown Liberty Hall into smash, but, he
added, there were no men in it. All the Labour Volunteers had marched
with Connolly into the Post Office.

He said the Labour Volunteers might possibly number about one thousand
men, but that it would be quite safe to say eight hundred, and he held
that the Labour Volunteers, or the Citizens' Army, as they called
themselves, had always been careful not to reveal their numbers. They
had always announced that they possessed about two hundred and fifty
men, and had never paraded any more than that number at any one time.
Workingmen, he continued, knew that the men who marched were always
different men. The police knew it, too, but they thought that the
Citizens Army was the _most deserted-from force_ in the world.

The men, however, were not deserters--you don't, he said, desert a man
like Connolly, and they were merely taking their turn at being drilled
and disciplined. They were raised against the police who, in the big
strike of two years ago, had acted towards them with unparallelled
savagery, and the men had determined that the police would never again
find them thus disorganised.

This man believed that every member of the Citizen Army had marched with
their leader.

"The men, I know," said he, "would not be afraid of anything, and," he
continued, "they are in the Post Office now."

"What chance have they?"

"None," he replied, "and they never said they had, and they never
thought they would have any."

"How long do you think they'll be able to hold out?"

He nodded towards the house that had been bombarded by heavy guns.

"That will root them out of it quick enough," was his reply.

"I'm going home," said he then, "the people will be wondering if I'm
dead or alive," and he walked away from that sad street, as I did myself
a few minutes afterwards.

CHAPTER IV.

THURSDAY.

Again, the rumours greeted one. This place had fallen and had not
fallen. Such a position had been captured by the soldiers; recaptured by
the Volunteers, and had not been attacked at all. But certainly fighting
was proceeding. Up Mount Street, the rifle volleys were continuous, and
the coming and going of ambulance cars from that direction were
continuous also. Some