h him, just to see what
he'd say. I must say for him he wasted no time. It was a quarter past
seven when he began, so there wasn't much time to waste."

"'Boys,' he said, 'will you tell me straight and plain what is it you
want?' O'Farrelly began a long speech about an Irish republic and things
of that kind. I sat with my watch in my hand opposite Father Conway and
every now and then I pointed to the hands, so as to remind him that time
was going on. At twenty-five past seven he stopped O'Farrelly and
said they couldn't have an Irish republic just then--though they might
later--on account of that gun. Then he asked them again to say exactly
what they wanted, republics being considered a wash-out You'd have been
surprised if you heard the answer he got Every man in the place stood up
and shouted that he asked nothing better than to die for Ireland. They
meant it, too. I thought it was all up and Father Conway was done. But
he wasn't."

"'Who's preventing you?' he said. 'Just form fours in the square outside
and you'll all be dead in less than half an hour. But if you stay here
a lot of other people who don't want to die for Ireland or anything else
will be killed too; along with having their homes knocked down on them.'

"Well, they saw the sense of that. O'Farrelly formed his men up outside
and made a speech to them. He said if any man funked it he could stay
where he was and only those who really wanted to die need go on. It was
a quarter to eight when he finished talking and I was in terror of my
life that there'd be some delay getting rid of the men who fell out But
there wasn't a single defaulter. Every blessed one of those men--and
most of them were only boys--did a right turn and marched out of the
town in column of fours. I can tell you, Waterhouse, I didn't like
watching them go. Father Conway and my dad were standing on the steps of
the court house, blubbering like children."

"I suppose they weren't all killed?" said Waterhouse.

"None of them were killed," said Power. "There wasn't a shot fired.
You see, when the English officer saw them march out of the town he
naturally thought they'd come to surrender, and didn't fire on them."

"He couldn't possibly have thought that," said Waterhouse, "unless they
laid down their arms."

"As a matter of fact," said Power, "hardly any of them had any arms,
except hockey sticks, and the Colonel thought they'd piled them up
somewhere. He seems to have been a decent s