One day during the week after I left the hospital, I heard that a batch of prisoners was to be taken to England aboard a cattle-boat leaving the pier called North Wall. I went down at once to watch for them. It was a very wet day, and the prisoners had been marched six miles from Richmond barracks through the pouring rain. But they were singing their rebel songs, just as if they had never been defeated and were not on their way to the unknown horrors of an English prison. The officer in charge seemed much excited, though he had five hundred soldiers to look after a hundred prisoners. "For God's sake, close in, or we'll be rushed!" he shouted to his men. Then the soldiers, with fixed bayonets, "closed in" upon the wet crowd of rebels, who actually seemed to feel the humor of it. I knew some of the boys, and walked in between the bayonets to shake hands with them and march a part of the way. They had heard I was dead, and looked at first as if they were seeing a ghost. One of them, a little, lame playwright of whom I had caught a glimpse at Bridewell, had told me at the time that he was writing a farce about the revolution to show its absurdity. He had had nothing to do with the rising, for it was his brother who had been with us at the College of Surgeons. There was not even a charge against him; yet here he was, limping along in the rain and mud, but still cheerful. This chap gave me a bundle of clothes and a message for his mother, so I hunted her up the next morning. She did not know he had been deported, and was in despair, for she had left her little cottage in the country to be near her son in Dublin. When I visited her she was just back from market with fruit she had bought to take to him, as it was visiting day at the barracks. These are some of the things that made even quiet old mothers grow bitter. XIII No one could leave Ireland for Scotland without a special permit from Dublin Castle. This permit was given only when one applied in person, so I decided to go after it. My friends were terrified; it was putting my head into the lion's mouth. But it was the only way, even though I might never come out of that building free. I took my arm out of the sling, hoping I should not have to raise it; for I couldn't, nor can yet. For greater precaution, just before I reached Dublin Castle, I removed the republican colors I always wore, and put them in my pocket. I was taken to a room where a police official began to ask me questions. It was, I believe, my "loyal" Scotch accent that put them off guard, when I asked for a permit to go to Glasgow. At the hospital one of the nurses shook her head, following a long talk, and said: "Your opinions and your accent don't go together." I have often been told that I look more like a teacher of mathematics, which, indeed, I am, than like an Irish rebel, of which I am more proud.