me of them had on uniform knickers, and
some, long, unpressed trousers. On the opposite side of the street were
blocked similar squads of serious-eyed, high-chinned girls. Some of them
were in green tweed suits, and others as they had come from work. They were
companies of the Citizens' Army recruited by the Irish Labor party, and
assembled in honor of the return of the Countess Markewicz from jail.

"Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We'll keep the red flag flying here."

Young voices, impatient of the interim of waiting, sang the socialist song.
The burden was taken up by the laborers, whose constant movement to keep a
good view was attested by the hollow sound of their wooden-soled boots on
the stone walks. And the refrain was hummed by the shawled, frayed-skirted
creatures who were coming up from Talbot street, Gloucester street,
Peterson's lane, and all the family-to-a-room districts in Dublin. On the
skeletonish railroad crossing suspended over the Liffey, tin-hatted and
bayonet-carrying British soldiers were silhouetted against the
moon-whitened sky. Up to them floated the last oath of "The Red Flag":

"With heads uncovered swear we all,
To bear it onward till we fall.
Come dungeon dark or gallows grim,
This song shall be our parting hymn."

Clattered over the bridge the horse-dragged brake. In the light of a search
lamp played on it from an automobile behind, a small figure in a slouch hat
and a big black coat waved a bouquet of narcissus. There was a surge of the
block-long crowds and people who could not see lifted their hands and
shouted: "Up the countess!"

As we waited in the light of the dim yellow bulbs threaded from the ceiling
of the big bare upper front room of Liberty Hall, Susan Mitchell told me of
"the chivalrous woman." The countess is a daughter of the Gore-Booth family
which owned its Sligo estate before America was discovered. As a girl the
countess used to ride fast horses like mad along the rocky western coast.
Then she became a three-feathered debutante bowing at Dublin Castle. Later
she painted pictures in Paris and married her handsome Pole. But one day
some one put an Irish history in her hands. In a sudden whole-hearted
conversion to the cause of the people, the countess turned to aid the Irish
labor organizers. She drilled boy scouts for the Citizens' Army. She fed
starving strikers during the labor troubles of 1913 with sheep sent daily
from her Sligo estate. In