The next morning I asked the Chief Warder if he had any labour gang at which I could be employed, for I dreaded a continuance of the thoughts that had been with me through the night.
“I can put you moulding my potatoes,” he said, with the air of a man who spoke of something so ridiculous that it disposed of itself.
“Very well,” I said.
“Can you mould potatoes?” he said.
He seemed to be diffident now when his humour took actual shape.
“I can try,” I said. “I was eight hours setting them the day before you took me.”
So a Gaelic League organiser, an Excise man,
were employed throughout that day moulding the Chief Warder’s potatoes; we enjoyed the work; and we enjoyed it none the less because of the new warder under whom we were placed. This warder had made his first appearance, as far as I was concerned, the previous day. The mask he wore was not sour, but melancholy; and that in itself was a great difference. His voice, too, suggested possibilities. It was southern, and somewhere muffled in its official brevity a human quality echoed. I had heard that quality instantly when, the previous day, he came into my cell to bid me hasten as he had others to attend to besides myself. I had not hastened; but, quite deliberately, I had stood and looked at him. “’Tis queer criminals you have these times, warder,” I said. I looked at him; and he looked at me. Then he went to the door, looked up and down the passage, and returned to me. “Faith, you’re right, sir,” he said. “’Tis a queer sort of criminals these times.” It would be hard to express all that he managed to convey in those few words. Perhaps the melancholy mask he wore was all the more melancholy because of the thoughts he could not utter. Strange pass for a man when his hand is bought against his fellow-countrymen; and strangest of all when his heart is not bought with his hand. We had no cause to regret our warder during that day’s labour; but I am sure he was not as sorry for us as I was for him.
He was with us on Sunday also. It being Sunday, we only received one hour’s exercise during the morning; and as the Chief Warder and his other officials had gone to Mass the warder was in sole charge of us. Therefore we all had exercise together; and when I entered the yard I saw that my guess of Friday was correct, for there was P. J. D. already before me. He threw up his hand in welcome, and a smile lit over his face. I passed over and walked behind him.
There were many new faces there. There were about sixteen or seventeen of us. Some were in prison clothes.
Some had come into conflict with English troops with whom they had been stationed.
I turned to note the others in civilian clothes. One was an elderly man, with grey beard and majesterial manner: I never found out who he was. The man, however, who struck me most walked just ahead of P. J. D. Tall and athletic of build, he strode round and round the path, the very embodiment of wrath. His face, when I caught a side glance of it as he turned each bend, was black and lowering. Once as we came round the corner that served so well for our quick interchanges, he turned about, took a quick glance at the warder’s retreating back, and shook his fist at the prison and all it signified, and said: “By God, but there’ll be a big judgment to pay for all this yet.” Then he strode on again, striking his heels on the ground. He had probably just completed his first night in jail; and his emotion had not yet become transmuted into something more settled and grim. “Keep your heart up, man, keep your heart up,” I heard P. J. D. whisper. “There’s plenty of time before all of us.”
