Mulholland rose calmly and approached them, holding the three matches on his open palm. Without speaking he pointed to them. Two long and one short. They all examined them. Right. Each nodded his head solemnly. Not a word. Mulholland nodded and marched away to the far end of the room. They did not follow him now with their eyes. They stared painfully at the floor. The tallest of them was a docker called Peter Hackett. He was a fair-haired young giant, slim and lean faced, with sleepy blue eyes and a gentle mouth. His great bony hands were thickly covered with long white hairs. He stood with his arms folded on his chest, one leg thrust forward, his eyes wide open and strained, his forehead wrinkled. He was only twenty-two. This was the first time he had been chosen for an affair of this sort. It was particularly strange and odious to him, because he was a good-natured soul, loved by all on the quays where he worked. He had no conception of politics or of any problem other than hurling, football, horse racing and pitch and toss, which he played all Sunday afternoon on the Canal bank with his cronies. He often lost his whole week’s wages playing pitch and toss. On these occasions, when he went home to his young wife penniless, he would first of all dance around the kitchen in a fit of rage and perhaps break a thing or two, threatening to blow Kitty’s brains out if she said a word. Then his anger would suddenly evaporate, to be followed by a fit of sobbing. During this fit he sat by the fire with his head in his hands, moaning and begging Kitty to forgive him. His wife always felt exalted when these outbursts occurred, because the excitement of the quarrel and Peter’s kisses, which lasted far into the night afterwards, were a welcome break in the dreary monotony of everyday life as a docker’s wife, scouring, cooking, washing, with two children to look after on a docker’s wages. Peter had no imagination. He lacked the refined conscience and sense of injustice that attracts most gentle natures like his towards a revolutionary movement. He was not the stuff of which the other sort of revolutionary is made either. He belonged to the Organization simply because the rest of “the boys” belonged to it, and out of fanatical hero-worship for Commandant Dan Gallagher.