47 frowned. “It’s a lonely life for a woman,” he said, “and a nervy one, too. Of course, one always is meeting new people, always going from door to door; but in his heart a man is as lonely as a desert islander. Never a word spoken in favour of his beliefs. Never, never, never!” A fish moved in the running water which was the boundary of this side of the gardens. It brought 47 out of the brown study into which he was falling. “They’re trout,” I said. “I saw them earlier in the year, when the sun was about. We’ll come and give your wife a look up.” “Not yet,” he answered. “I expect it would be all right; but wait a bit.” “Don’t be too long, or we’ll come along in spite of you. Do you mean you are shadowed?” “Not as far as I know. Did you ever hear our mutual friend’s receipt for getting rid of a follower?” “No.” “When you look behind and find what you suspected is a fact, and the man in the dirty velour hat and shabby raincoat is still hanging a hundred yards behind, saunter to a shop window. In a minute your friend will follow suit a few doors down. Directly he has chosen his window, you find you have seen all you want in your window, and you go along and look in at his window. There you both stay. But sooner or later somebody has to move, and you make sure that he does. Directly he moves off you follow him. By the time he has gone down two streets and found you at his heels he wonders what has happened. At the end of another two streets he makes a bolt for a passing tram. He won’t come on any more expeditions with you.” “That sounds simple.” “It wouldn’t do you much good if you stayed all the time in the same place. You’d soon get picked up by somebody else. I’m off.” “I wanted to hear how you think things are going.” “I’ve not made up my own mind yet. I’ll tell you next time.” Without any more fuss he started to walk away down the path, and I let him go. It was some weeks before we saw him again. CHAPTER IX THE HUNGER STRIKE I took the tram back to College Green, and found the paper boys raising a great clamour there. The first of the Cork hunger strikers had died. As I left the tram and threaded through the crowd towards Grafton Street, I felt that, like myself, all these people I was rubbing shoulders with were fearful this was an augury of more terrible events. For more than two months the incredible fast of fifty Irishmen had been capturing the public imagination, and, according to the Nationalist Press, the imagination of half the world. Interest in the fasting men had lasted through eight weeks of fierce events--violent deed followed daily by violent reprisal. On August 12th, Terence MacSwiney, who had succeeded to the office of Lord Mayor of Cork on the assassination of Lord Mayor MacCurtain, was arrested, and with other prisoners to the number of fifty-one, went on hunger strike.