their posts. rounds; so that on the following tries, from trees overlooking morning the camp was full of rumours of how several Sinn Feiners had popped their heads over the wall and insulted the sentries. Perhaps the sentry, after challenging the cat and receiving no reply, had fired off a round, and that added an additional thrill to the narrative as it circulated through the messes : an attack on the barracks had been briskly repulsed, and one severely wounded Sinn Feiner had been carried away by his comrades. Not that all these stories were idle tales, or every incident of the kind merely an affair of cats. There were certain spots in the vicinity where the rebels did lurk at night on the outlook for any negligence that might give them their opportunity. On one especial night, when some ingenious persons had planned to break the monotony of this vie de garnison by giving a dance, the Sinn Fein Intelligence branch got wind of what was happening, and made up its mind to test the alertness of the defenders. It was about half-past eleven, or perhaps scarcely so late, when an orderly came hot and flustered to the door of the mess asking for the officer on duty. Being required to state his business, he announced that the picquet had been alarmed and were "standing to." Further inquiries elicited the news that several shots had been fired, unmistakably at the sen Now the picquet in question was placed on the slope of a piece of rough hillside which ran down to a stone wall. On the other side of the wall ran a broad belt of thick unkempt bushes, and rising out of their midst a row of tall trees, elm or lime, at intervals of about five yards. And beyond this lay a well-ordered cemetery full of big shrubs and flower-beds, with plenty of places most admirably suited to the concealment of a man with a rifle. The duty officer, being summoned to the scene of the occurrence, went down with the orderly to reconnoitre. He found a universal expression of opinion that shots had been fired, and almost certainly from one of the trees in the cemetery; but whether they were concerned with one sniper only, or whether there were numbers of men hidden behind the bushes, was a mystery. The new moon shining above the camp made the forms of the sentries visible when the guard was changed, while among the trees on the lower slope of the hill the firer would be easily concealed. It was decided ultimately that the best plan was to patrol the ground where the disturbers of the peace might be hid. But as secrecy was the main object, the officer decided to take only one man with himself into the cemetery, and to leave a strong reinforcement behind the wall, where they would be ready in case their work. The old bull-dog of emergency. An old soldier, Fenwick by name, though more familiarly known to his comrades as "the bull-dog," or to officers as the sleuth," to whom this kind of thing was familiar, and who appeared delighted at the prospect of an adventure that reminded him of old times, was selected as eminently fitted for the purpose. There were certain difficulties at the outset. The outlying region of the camp which bordered the cemetery was protected by a most inconvenient apron of barbed wire, and there appeared to be no exit through this into the ground beyond. The slightest mistake in getting through an obstacle of this kind is apt to be prejudicial to clothes, not to say hands and faces. The direct way into the cemetery, therefore, over the wire on the top of the wall and through the bushes, was abandoned in favour of a more circuitous route. This would avoid the wire and would lessen the possibility of discovery if the ground beyond the wall should be occupied. All the members of the patrol crept through the wire six hundred yards higher up the hill, where it has only two strands instead of six, and is thus more easily negotiable, close to the great bastion which protects the inner precincts of the fort, and even then they had reason to curse the conscientious thoroughness with which the Engineers had done showed himself to be no respecter of persons. He was outspoken with his advice, which was nearly always sound; and there was no question that the patrol leader had been wise in his choice. After they had advanced some distance along the side of a hedge through a dripping cornfield, they reached the angle of the wall where an overhanging tree facilitated the descent. They had now come back almost to the point from which they had started after their preliminary conference, with this advantage, that they were on the other side of the hedge with its powerful reinforcement of barbed wire. Through it they could exchange remarks with the sentries on the camp side. It was decided that the main body of the patrol should stay here, and that only the officer and the bull-dog should go into the cemetery. Strict orders were given to the sergeant in charge that they were not to stir from the spot or to talk in anything but the lowest tone; and that they were to be ready for action on the whistle sounding. As is the case with so many of these walls built upon rapid slopes, the drop on the farther side was considerable-from eighteen to twenty feet. Knowledge of this only dawned on them later after they had flopped down into a mass of ivy and rhododendron bushes, where they waited for some into the deep tangle of bushes time in silence, listening intently. A plan of action had now to be decided upon. To begin with, the officer had to remind the bull-dog, for the second time, that they were not to fire on any one at sight, unless it were proved to their entire satisfaction that he had arms in his hands. In other words, whether they saw their enemy first or not, he would have the first shot. The bull-dog listened to this rather impatiently, which attitude, although not entirely correct, was perhaps excusable. And then he said "That's very unjust, sir." it's an order." "All right, sir!" The long line of trees, already mentioned as on the farther side of the wall from the camp, stretched far away in front, and here and there the moonlight shone through the spaces between them, creating paths of brightness over the grass. That threw the rest of the scene before them into a still deeper shadow. At such times it is hard to keep the imagination in check. How many men might be lurking among those shadows! Or perhaps there was only one sniper sitting in a tree, and he had heard their fall as they stumbled into the rhododendron bushes. After a longish interval, in which no form could be seen, no sound could be heard, they advanced stealthily along the path, sinking every few yards by its side, with every sense alert to catch the slightest indication of a human presence. But as no one appeared, and there was nothing to break the silence save the occasional call of a night bird or the distant rumble of a lorry going on its rounds, their caution diminished. They ceased to advance in a crouching attitude, and walked boldly along the path. Both agreed, after holding a short council of war, that dangerous people might be hiding among the trees, and therefore they decided to patrol the complete length of the path to the end of the cemetery. The sleuth became very pleased and animated on recognising a spot where the long grass and undergrowth had been trodden down as if a man had passed, and here they waited for several minutes on the chance of hearing something moving or breathing. The enemy might be securely seated in one of the branches on the other side of the thicket, and if his attention was closely fixed on the camp there was every reason why he should be quite ignorant of their approach. For the ground was soft, their their footsteps made hardly any sound, and the thicket was dense enough to hide them completely. They walked along the path bordering the wall, peeped everywhere, looked up into the trees on the chance of seeing a man or some part of one betrayed by the moon, clearly were unaware either of the existence of any patrol or of its password, and who would most likely have shot at sight. which could now be Said the old soldier, "I've been in Ireland nine months, sir, and I've some experience of this work; and I can say with certainty, this is the most dangerous place in the neighbourhood. Down there's the Sinn Fein headquarters," and he pointed through the trees to where some lights twinkled in a couple of cottages nine hundred yards or so away in the valley. "You can see them drilling here of an evening any time you care to look out from the top of the 'il just before dark. And this," he said, with profound emphasis, this is from where they spies on us." These suggestions certainly proved the sleuth a daring man, not to say a reckless. His zeal was obviously getting the better of him. All this was with the hope of bagging a Sinn Feiner red-handed, his chief ambition in life as he afterwards explained. Wiser counsels, however, prevailed; the sleuth was made to understand that the object of the patrol was to ascertain that there was no force of Sinn Feiners in the cemetery waiting to spring a surprise on the camp, and that the patrol would confine themselves to that object. They moved, then, on to the lower slopes, where patches of moonlight alternated with broad regions of shade beneath clumps of yew and cypress. They waited behind an avenue of these dark trees, and then The realisation of the truth crossed a path, one at a time, of this announcement did not with precaution. It was diffideter him, however, once made cult for them to believe as they fairly certain that there was moved out into the moonlight no rebel in the place where he that the details of their clothhad expected to find one, from ing and the features of their proposing that they should faces were not visible from walk through the gate to an- every point of vantage in the other gate leading into the neighbourhood; but then the road, and then walk down the memory of their former exroad and clamber into the periences at this same trade camp by a different entrance came to their assistance, and to the one by which the patrol they reflected that just as a had gone out: this at imminent tree or a shrub can look exactly risk to their clothes and persons like a man under the moon, from the wire, and to their so a man moving forward lives from the sentries, who spasmodically and crouching as still as death after his spring, in the same voice, so deep and can easily be mistaken for a branch shaken in the wind. All at once the officer felt a sudden violent tug at the sleeve of his tunic. Acting as by second nature, he dropped and lay still. The sleuth was lying beside him, every sense on the alert. He was one to rely on in a situation of this kind, and the only fear was that excitement might gain too great a mastery over him. He had marvellous eyes that man; he could see in the sombre light like a cat. Fifty yards ahead of them there was something moving. The sleuth pointed cautiously in the direction. There were two small beds of shrubs just before them, and a little to the left some twenty yards beyond these a line of yew-trees. And there, just beneath them, something moved. No, it could not be a branch of a tree,-it was a man. He was bending backwards and forwards, and when he came forwards the moonlight fell on him, and when he went backwards he vanished for a moment. And they lay there watching him. "Looks as if he was doing physical exercises, it do, sir," said the sleuth in the lowest undertone, recovering slightly from his astonishment. The sleuth drew up his rifle into position, the officer grasped his revolver more firmly. Then "Steady there," whispered the officer; not yet." "That's one of them blackguards," went on the old soldier low that it could not be heard a yard away from the ear it was intended for. "I don't know what he's up to, sir, but depend upon it he's not out here at this time o' night for any good." For a moment the officer wondered whether it might not be advisable to crawl back and collect the rest of the patrol; but he abandoned this idea on reflecting that surprise is the all-important element on occasions of this kind. He thought of the rattle their tin hats would make as they came up, and that they would probably talk as well as clank their rifles. No, this was an affair where stealth and secrecy were essential, and at least he had a thoroughly sound man with him on whom he could rely absolutely in a tight corner. "Fenwick, you creep along to the left here under cover of these two thick bushes. I will get round to the right. In ten minutes or less I'll be lying under that small tree five yards from the farther side of the path. You see the tree I |