belongings with difficulty, but the smoke was
too terrible to do more, and the stairs were perfectly hot; and so I
went back with the owner to the hotel, where the family were put up and
given clothes, having been forced to rise from their beds.

Soon after this I met Mr. Marsh, the manager of the Coliseum, who told
me that the rebels had just commandeered the building, which immediately
backs the Post Office, and had placed a guard at the door to prevent
looting.

As a matter of fact, as we afterwards found out, it was merely to secure
the building as a means of retreat in case of a rout of their
headquarters at the Post Office--with the result that the building is
now burnt to the ground by naval shells, which pursued the rebels in
their retreat.

Sleep on such a night was of course out of the question--we did not know
at what time the military would arrive--but in any case we secured a
room on the second floor, looking into the street, for we were
determined to see the thing out, still never dreaming but that the whole
thing would be over within a few dramatic hours. Meanwhile the street
below became worse and worse. On all sides now the looters came up from
the black depths of the slums like packs of hungry wolves, so that every
minute we expected that Clery's underneath would be the next to go.
Indeed, over at Mansfield's opposite we heard one of the crowd telling
the looters to go over and smash William Martin Murphy's windows--Murphy
was one of the directors of Clery's--and reminding them that it was he,
Boss Murphy, was the real enemy of the people--"the man who caused the
lock-out in the days of Jim Larkin"; but the looters, having tasted the
blood of theft, were far too avaricious by this time to think of
politics in their orgy, and instead began to make a raid on a
tobacco-shop, and next a small jeweller's. One could see small boys,
too, going to the outskirts of the crowd to sell the booty, so that
those who had not the pluck to steal salved their consciences by buying
the loot, in most cases getting some fifteen or twenty shillings' worth
for as many farthings.

About twelve the Sinn Feiners, without directly encouraging loot,
unconsciously helped it by the order to "barricade the side streets,"
and for hours nothing could be heard but the crash of furniture being
pitched into the street below from second, third, and fourth story
windows, till the barricades were eight or ten feet high, composed of
cha