“Please God it may be!,” he answered with emotion. 5 And, as we spoke, the last chapter was opening. Though neither of us had paid much attention to the report that certain political prisoners were being removed to England, we awoke next day to find that public interest had been deflected to another part of the battle. As a football match is suddenly suspended at sound of the referee’s whistle and the players stand apart to watch one of their number who has been injured, so the armies in Ireland, the factions in England, the spectators all over the world now stood apart to watch one man slowly dying. The lord mayor of Cork, arrested and imprisoned, refused to take food. For a week or two, while life still ticked loudly, we debated over our dinners whether he had been rightly condemned, whether the government would let him die of starvation, whether he and his cause would not be made ridiculous if he were fed forcibly. Then the contest became more determined: the government would not yield to a hunger-strike; and Terence McSwiney, with life ticking now less clearly, would not yield to the government. It was a question of endurance. “_Do come here next week-end if you can possibly manage it_,” wrote Barbara. “_This business about the lord mayor must be decided one way or the other by then._” . . . I could give no promise. The papers were at this time recording the days of the fast and hunting for stories of men who had lived for three, four, five weeks without food. The ticking became feebler; and, one press-night, when I sat shuffling an obituary, an appeal and a face-saving leader on McSwiney’s surrender, we heard that the strike was over. The report was contradicted before I reached the composing-room. A week later, as the unwound spring stopped, jerked and stopped again, we were told that the lord mayor was dead. He was still alive next day, next week. Sympathy flowed and ebbed. The government was entreated to spare a game fighter; the public grew angrily unhappy at being made an accomplice in this slow torture. Then a gust of impatience blew against such crazy stubbornness; there followed a flash of illumination, and Dainton, who would have shot McSwiney out of hand two months before, asked dubiously whether an Ireland of McSwineys would be easy to “reconquer”. At length the dying prisoner became an institution. His name was tucked into inconspicuous corners of the daily papers. There were other claims on the public attention. At last he died; and we realized that, as the injured player no longer obstructed the field, the match must go on.