such urgency is due towards the payment of wages. One of his boys said
there was no fun in telling lies to Mr. Pearse, for, however outrageous
the lie, he always believed it. He built and renovated and improved his
school because the results were good for his scholars, and somehow he
found builders to undertake these forlorn hopes.

It was not, I think, that he "put his trust in God," but that when
something had to be done he did it, and entirely disregarded logic or
economics or force. He said--such a thing has to be done and so far as
one man can do it I will do it, and he bowed straightaway to the task.

It is mournful to think of men like these having to take charge of
bloody and desolate work, and one can imagine them say, "Oh! cursed
spite," as they accepted responsibility.




CHAPTER XI

LABOUR AND THE INSURRECTION.


No person in Ireland seems to have exact information about the
Volunteers, their aims, or their numbers. We know the names of the
leaders now. They were recited to us with the tale of their execution;
and with the declaration of a Republic we learned something of their
aim, but the estimate of their number runs through the figures ten,
thirty, and fifty thousand. The first figure is undoubtedly too slender,
the last excessive, and something between fifteen and twenty thousand