Accordingly he decided to quit the field again and to leave the clever political manipulators in possession. After he had sent in his application for the Chiltern Hundreds I came across specially from Ireland to meet him at the Westminster Palace Hotel. It were meet not to dwell upon our interview, for there are some things too sacred for words. I know that he had then no intention of ever returning to public life, and though he was obviously a man very, very ill, in the physical sense, yet I could see it was the deeper wounds of the soul that really mattered. I have had sorrows in my life and deep afflictions, the scars of which nothing on this earth can cure, yet I can say I never felt parting so poignantly as with this friend, whom I loved most and venerated most on earth. I returned to Ireland that night, not knowing whether I should ever see the well-beloved face again. He went to Italy on the morrow to seek peace and healing, away from the land to which he had given more than a life's labour and devotion. He enjoined his friends not to communicate with him, but he promised to watch from a distance, and that if the occasion ever arose he would not see them cast to destruction without effort of his duty made. How well and generously he kept that promise these pages will show. CHAPTER XVIII A CAMPAIGN OF EXTERMINATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES Mr O'Brien went abroad in March 1909, leaving his friends in membership of the Irish Party. His last injunction to us was that we should do nothing unnecessarily to draw down the wrath of "the bosses" upon us and to work as well as we might in the circumstances conscientiously for the Irish cause. I had some reputation, whether deserved or otherwise, as a successful organiser, and I wrote to Mr Redmond offering my services to re-establish the United Irish League in my own constituency or in any other place where it was practically moribund. I received a formal note of acknowledgment and heard not a word more, nor was my offer ever availed of. On the contrary, the fiat went forth that the constituencies of those who had for five years remained staunch and steadfast to the policy of Conciliation should be organised against them and that not a friend of Mr O'Brien should be allowed to remain in public life. We were not yet actually cut off from the Party or its financial perquisites, but in all other ways we were treated as political pariahs and outcasts and made to feel that there was a rod in pickle for us.