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ment caused him to feel, even though he did not comprehend, the aloofness of his position.

One Sunday morning while the villagers were at Mass, about a dozen young menmostly shop - assistants and clerks from the nearest townassembled with a mixed pack of greyhounds and harriers in the furzy field above my avenue.

Teige was amongst them. I recognised his tall lanky figure. Later, I met him face to face after the meeting had dispersed. (For clearly it was a meeting rather than a meet -sedition and conspiracy masquerading as simple sport.)

He touched his cap gravely as he passed me. I was struck by the strangeness of his expression. It was harassed and perturbed to a remarkable degree. There was even a suggestion of dazed uncertainty in his movements. He looked like a man who had lost his way in a fog.

The following evening, to my surprise, I found him with Dinneen in the glen. The voice of the latter, raised in argument, was audible as I approached the chestnut-tree. Dinneen seemed roused for once from his easy-going cheerfulness. And Teige stood with his shoulders hunched and his head thrust forward, gazing moodily into space.

Between them, on the ground, the local newspaper, a rebel publication, proclaimed in staring headlines

"TWO MORE

FINE REPUBLICAN VICTORIES."

Needless to ask for particulars of the "victories." A bomb flung from a railway bridge into a lorry crowded with soldiers; a police patrol shot down from the safe shelter of a loopholed wall,-the Irish newspapers daily record similar outrages; the English, with few exceptions, ignore them, or merely condemn the retribution which sometimes overtakes their perpetrators.

"I tell you it's a disgrace," Dinneen was saying. "It's not victory-it's low-down devilish murder. It is," he hesitated, searching his brain for some super-stinging condemnation,-"it is a dirty, cowardly, Hunnish game."

He told me afterwards he had to speak his mind, even if he died for it next minute. And he knew Teige carried a revolver.

I could not hold my tongue either. I echoed Dinneen's horror.

Teige said sullenly

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The republic declared war upon England. The soldiers and police is the enemy."

"If you call it war, why don't you fight fair," I cried. "Why do you take England's money and let the English navy protect your shores? You call it war, but you only attack when there is no danger to yourselves. It is not war, but treachery-treachery and cowardice, and Ireland is disgraced for ever by it."

Of course it was foolish and imprudent to speak thus, but I did not stop to consider.

Teige's face flushed. His

right hand slipped swiftly inside his coat. The gesture is a familiar one to Irish loyalists. Some, indeed, do not live beyond its usual sequel. I wondered if he was really going to

shoot me.

But the next mo

ment he withdrew his hand and it was empty.

With his chin sunk below his collar he turned abruptly and walked away.

"I'm very onaisy in meself, ma'am," said Bat Cronin, shaking his head dejectedly.

I was driving along the bogroad to the railway junction, accompanied by the old man, who would " care the pony and trap" until my return in the afternoon.

Owing to the recent scene in the glen, I realised it was imperative to seek help for Dinneen without delay, and I intended personally to visit all the organisations for helping ex-soldiers, and even, if need be, lay his case before the general commanding the district. After my previous experience I would not again depend upon writing, and, indeed, the posts were becoming more and more unreliable.

"There was men in the rath

last night," continued Cronin; "I crep up behind the trees and heard a fella reading as fast as a horse 'ud gallop. Sure 'twas the dead spit of a priest saying mass— divil a word that a Christian could understand! He clapped a big sheet of paper on the ground, and I seen the lot of them looking it hither and over by dint of a bicycle lanthern, and one of them to be making thracks on it with an ashplant.

IX.

Is it what were they doing? Ah, faith then, how'd I be saying that unless I'd tell ye a lie? I declare to ye, ma'am, on account of the rustling of leaves that was in it, and meself getting the old age pinsion these two years, all I heard good or bad was the way some one of them'd say,

"Tis a grand clear night,' says he; ''twould be aisy to see the road over-right the rock and be settling our plans,' says he, and away with them then towards the little rock of the dancing."

I expressed surprise that the Sinn Feiners should hold their meeting in the rath instead of below the rock.

Cronin explained :

""Tis on account of the military changing the pathrol they have. Sure the lorry does be passing the little rock of the dancing an hour after sunset. 'Tis safer for the boys to be talking in the rath. Arrah! tell me now," he added impatiently, "what sinse have the soldiers at all? 'Tis desthroying themselves they are with their punctualness.'

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Not for the first time was I struck by the risk entailed by a system of patrols at fixed hours in a country where the

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It was in an irritated and anxious frame of mind that I carried the basket to the glen in the evening.

I had told Dinneen I should be later than usual, and the shadows were already growing long when I reached the pool, which shone with opal tints amid its fringe of reeds. of The ground was strewn with fallen horse-chestnut blossoms scarcely withered as yet, and diffusing a warm incense-like sweetness.

I pushed my way through the blackthorns to the leafy green cavern. Dinneen was not there. I put the basket on the ground and sat down to wait for him.

A willow-wren, darting from the blackthorn on my left, drew my attention to something white and uneven against the dark stem. Impaled upon

X.

a sharply broken branch was a piece of bread. I pulled it off. It was just a rough lump with a partly-cut slice at one end. As I held it a sudden thought-half instinct. half memory-came to me. During the early days of the war, when working with an ambulance in Flanders, I had heard tales of messages conveyed by strange means from men hidden in Belgian farms.

Carefully I turned back the half-cut slice, and found it concealed a hollow scooped from the heart of the loaf. Some paper rolled into a ball was visible. I drew it out, unfolded it, and read"A chara,

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below the rock to-morrow night at 9.30 (God's time) to be playing ball. The ball may

burst.

"P.S.-'Tis the way the two of us was patriots, but 'tis yourself was the best. God save Ireland.”

I turned the smeared and crumpled paper over and round. There was no signature, nor anything to indicate for whom it was intended. I was still examining it when Dinneen appeared. He read it attentively a couple of times.

I could see he was puzzled. "The ball may burst,' "" he repeated thoughtfully. Then his face changed.

"My God!" he exclaimed. "What can it mean?" I speculated. "Is it intended for you? And them that's in your trade,' Dinneen? Are they soldiers?"

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They are, ma'am," he replied, "and it's fixed for tomorrow night. No, hold on, hold on ! it's for to-night! Look, ma'am, the loaf is sodden with rain, and not a drop fell since yesterday evening. This message must have been here twenty-four hours. The Sinn Feiners intend to bomb the patrol when it passes the little rock of the dancing to-night."

"Can it be true! "I asked, though I knew it was only too likely. And if so, who sent the warning?"

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Teige sent it," said Dinneen in a whisper," and if they knew he'd pay for it with his life."

We were silent for a few minutes. Clearly the soldiers must be warned. Yet how at

this hour convey a message to the camp?

To telephone it would be unsafe. There was nobody I could send. Moreover, if the warning were genuine, the roads would certainly be watched by republican scouts, and there would be little chance of getting through to the camp.

Dinneen solved the problem by announcing he would go himself. He would strike

across country, avoiding the road, and take cover should he catch sight of any suspiciouslooking person. "Even if I don't get to the camp I'll manage somehow to intercept the lorry," he said.

At his suggestion I scribbled on a page torn from my notebook a few lines of explanation and recommendation to the officer in command at the camp.

Then I looked at my watch. It was nearly ten o'clock.

"The ball is to be set rolling soon after eleven," said Dinneen. "I must hurry. Thank God, though one arm is gone I still have two sound legs under me."

There was indeed no time to spare, though "God's time," which patriots still observe in that neighbourhood, is an hour and forty minutes behind summer-time.

Dinneen replaced the note in its hole in the rain-soaked loaf, and thrust the lump into an inner pocket.

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He laughingly referred to it "despatches," and spoke with confidence of getting through the enemy's lines.' I felt less hopeful.

A restlessness due to suspense and enforced inaction drove me out of the house again soon after sunset.

Passing through the grove of fir-trees outside the library window, I took a short cut to the fields on the hill.

The sky was a vivid saffron melting to indigo through gold and primrose tints. Against the brilliance the telephone poles stood abrupt and uncompromising.

Their very ugliness went some way towards restoring my confidence. They seemed to stand for law and order; they constituted, as it were, a link with civilisation.

Farther on, just below one pole, a goat struggled frantically. With every movement something hit the pole, making a metallic rattle. One glance at the unbridged space between that pole and the next revealed the fact that my link with civilisation had been severed. It also proved, indirectly, that Teige's warning was genuine.

After some little time spent in freeing the goat's leg from the wire in which it was caught, I went on up the hill. Once I fancied I heard stealthy footsteps following. I did not look round, however, but walked on somewhat faster, keeping in the shadow of the fence.

Daylight had gone a flat grey-blue tint was over every thing. Even on moonless

XI.

nights there is no real darkness at midsummer. Across the northern horizon lay a faint primrose line, which during the next few hours would gradually deepen and spread to the east. Around me drifts of daisies showing palely in the meadows, and dim white blossoms scattered through the hedges, shone like veiled lights in the fragrant dusk. It was a night far removed from all suggestions of murder and sudden death. Yet scarcely a mile away the little rock of the dancing stood threateningly above the crossroads.

And the patrol might pass at any moment now.

When the road was less than a field ahead, I was startled by again hearing footsteps behind me. This time they broke into a run.

No cover was available except a straggling thicket of alders into which I thrust myself, and crouched, holding my breath. The runner stopped just outside.

"Ma'am, ma'am !" came a panting whisper. "I'm thracking ye half the night. For God's sake let ye go aisy and not cross the road! Bedad, ye'll not get to go home ayther without losing your life, for they have the house watched on ye!"

I recognised old Bat Cronin. He groped towards me in the thicket.

"Is it yourself that's inside

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