What of the other wife who cried out to her husband and tried to help him escape through the window, and saw his broken body on the windowsill? What of the wife, coming from her bath, who was confronted with five men with revolvers? Pausing outside the bedroom door where her husband was sleeping, she faced them, appearing not to notice their revolvers. “Do you want my husband?” she asked, smiling. “He has just gone out, but do come in and wait.” Her face was untroubled. “Or perhaps you can leave a message,” she said. “I always take my husband’s messages, you can trust me.” The man mumbled something, and the party filed away. What of the wife who was held by two men while her husband was shot in front of her? When the raiders had left she found her husband still alive. She rushed into the street, looking wildly for a doctor, praying no doubt as she ran. She found a man and ran up to him. “My husband has just been shot,” she gasped, “but he is alive. Will you get a doctor, quick!” “Alive! My God, I’ll finish him!” He went up the steps pulling out his gun. The Sinn Fein women fought and suffered for their men equally well, lied for them, fetched and carried for them. The men had the limelight; but with few exceptions the women were unknown, and were content to be unknown. There was no reward for their services. I wonder how far a national movement would go if there was no public recognition for any one. A man unable to read about himself and his hunted companions would cut a sorry figure. A man hanged for his cause would go far less steadily to the scaffold without the support of the newspapers and the crowd. But I fancy a woman would acquit herself in all circumstances because her greatest instinct is service. CHAPTER XI AFTERMATH The officers met their ends in their beds, in their baths, at shaving. One and all were shot in cold blood, and, extraordinary to relate, no defence seems to have been made. In every case the victim was taken unawares. This veritable Slaughter of the Innocents could only have occurred to such a race as the British. These officers, on a par with their behaviour in the hotels, went to bed in an enemy country with unlocked doors and locked-up guns. That supreme British contempt for the enemy--at once the making and the undoing of Britain--limited the imagination of these people to such an extent that though they were engaged upon what is allowed to be most dangerous work, they could not conceive calamity falling upon themselves. Some time afterwards I spoke to a Dutchman, and he held up his hands and cried, “Here am I who would not go into a strange house without making inquiries and locking my door; and these men come into an enemy country and go openly about their work; and at night lock up their guns and go to sleep with the door open. Ach!”