Chapter VII: Part 7

Bridget was made of the right stuff, and with the daylight and the contact with friendly human beings her courage returned, and she went to see the auctioneer once more, but received cold comfort. The man had been warned not to hold the auction, but was willing to, provided he had police protection (he saw his trade slipping away if he did not), and suggested that she should go and see the D.I.

Blake listened patiently to her tale of woe—he already knew the part she had played with the Cloonalla Volunteers, but liked the girl’s looks and her pluck, and at the end promised her protection for the auction, but warned her that he could not protect her afterwards, and advised her to get out of the country as soon as she could.

Bridget then hired a car and drove out to Cloonalla to try and collect her belongings. The boxes were still there by the roadside, but empty. And on going on to her farms she found that the fences and gates were smashed and her cattle gone. She tried in vain to get information of them, but found that not a man, woman, or child would tell her anything.

Returning to Ballybor, she again saw Blake, who promised to send out police to try and find her cattle. The following day the police went out to Cloonalla, rounded up the first score of men they met, made them build up the fences, mend the gates, and lastly, gave them two hours to return Bridget’s cattle.

The I.R.A. now turned the full blast of that potent weapon, the boycott, on to the unfortunate Bridget. Not a soul would or rather dare speak to her—at any rate in public. Little children meeting her in the streets or country roads ran away, fearing lest she might cast an evil eye on them. Shopkeepers were forbidden to supply any goods to her, and the lodging-house people would have put her out on the streets but for the interference of the D.I. By this time Blake was determined to see her through, and when the auctioneer attempted to rat, made him think better of it and stick to his agreement with Bridget.

The day of the auction arrived, and with it the biggest crowd Cloonalla had ever seen. In fact, so dense was the throng that when Blake drew up with the auctioneer and Bridget, he was afraid to let his men near the crowd lest they might be rushed. Standing up in a Crossley, he ordered the people through a megaphone to form three sides of a square facing the road, and, as soon as they had complied with his order, he told the auctioneer to get out and carry on with his work on the fourth side of the square. This he did, and, after describing the value and virtues of the farms in the usual flowery language of his kind, asked for a bid.

There followed a deadly silence of fully two minutes. Again the auctioneer called for a bid, and yet a third time—not a man in the huge crowd dared open his mouth. Land-hunger is the predominant trait in a western peasant’s character, and many men in that crowd would have risked their souls for Bridget’s farms; but so great was the power, or rather the fear of the I.R.A., that not a single man dared speak.

Seeing that it was useless to go on with the farce, Blake ordered the auctioneer to return to the car. At once the crowd broke with an angry roar, and made an ugly rush towards the road, but a volley of blank in the air quickly stopped them, and they turned to scatter in the opposite direction, while the police party returned to Ballybor.

That night, when she went to bed in the lodging-house, Bridget locked her door and piled all the furniture she could against it. About 2 A.M. some one knocked loudly at her door and bade her open, but she lay still and gave no answer. She could then hear the raiders entering the other rooms of the house, and the screams of inmates, followed by the curses of the raiders.

The girl lay shaking in bed, knowing that it was only a question of time before they came again, and when they did it gave her almost a sense of relief. This time they did not knock, and she could hear whispering, followed by a man wearing rubber soles running down the passage, and then a crash as he hurled himself against her door.

The door was rotten and gave, but the furniture still held it up, and the other men then put their shoulders against it, and finally it gave way altogether, and the whole lot pitched into her room in a heap on the floor.

As Bridget screamed, the men flashed their electric torches on to her, and by the light she could see that they all wore painted white masks, which completely covered their faces except the eyes and mouth. One great brute then seized her by the hair, and dragged her screaming down the stairs and into the street, where the others held her while the big man shaved her hair off with a razor. They then lashed her wrists and ankles, gagged her, and flung her in her nightdress into a waiting Ford, which disappeared into the night.

A police patrol, guided by the screams, arrived on the scene just as the Ford was disappearing in the direction of Castleport. Sending a constable back to the barracks for a car and more men, the sergeant in charge searched the lodging-house, only to raise a fresh alarm among the terrified inmates, most of whom were under their beds.

In a few minutes the car arrived, and the police raced off after the Ford as fast as the Crossley would travel.

For some time the police had had a strong suspicion that a creamery about half-way between Ballybor and Castleport had been frequently used by the I.R.A. as a detention prison, and as they drew near the place they saw lights disappear from the windows.

After surrounding the building, the sergeant knocked at the door and received no answer. Being afraid to delay lest they might be attacked, he told his men to take one of the two thick iron-bound planks carried under the body of the Crossley, and used for crossing trenches on the roads, and to use it as a battering-ram on the door. At the second blow the door splintered, and a third made a hole large enough for the police to pass in.

The sergeant now advanced into the building, revolver in one hand and torch in the other, and had nearly reached the back when shots and shouts were heard, and at the same time he saw a man disappearing through a door ahead of him and fired.

On reaching the door he was met by his own men, who said that three men had tried to escape that way, and that they had shot two, the third escaping.

They then searched the building, and found Bridget lying in a kind of coal-cellar, half-dead from fright and exposure, and, wrapping her in a policeman’s greatcoat, took her back to the lodging-house, leaving a guard there for the rest of the night.

The next day Bridget fled to England, to return to America from Southampton. Nothing in this world would have induced her to spend another night in Ireland.

She left the sale of her farms in the hands of the auctioneer, who, to his great surprise, some time afterwards found a buyer at a low figure in a man who came from the north.

The police saw the northerner into his new home, and left him there. The following morning the man staggered into the Ballybor Barracks, and when he had sufficiently recovered, he told Blake that soon after he had gone to sleep he was awakened by volumes of smoke, and on getting out of bed found that the house was on fire. Seizing his clothes, he just managed to get out before the blazing roof fell in.

Outside he was met by a roaring crowd, who beat him nearly to death with sticks, and while he lay on the ground he could hear the screams of his horses and cattle being burnt to death in the blazing outbuildings. The crowd then left him for dead, well pleased with their night’s work. After some hours he recovered and managed to crawl into Ballybor.

XVI.
FATHER JOHN.

The tiny village of Annagh lies on the eastern slope of the Slievenamoe Mountains, about fifteen miles due east of Ballybor, and consists of one dirty street with, roughly, forty-nine miserable tumble-down hovels and one grand slated two-storied house, as usual the shop and abode of the village gombeen man, who also kept the Post Office—not because he was the most honest man in the village, but because there was nobody else able to do so.

A good many years ago, on a bitter winter’s night, a tinker, answering to the name of Bernie M’Andrew, drove his ass-cart into the village of Annagh, and called at the only shop to know if there were any kettles or cans to be mended. The night was so cold and wet that the old shopkeeper, in the kindness of his heart, bade the shivering tinker put up his ass and spend the night. The tinker stayed and never left.

M’Andrew’s stock-in-trade, when he arrived at Annagh on that winter’s night, consisted of half a barrel of salt herrings, a kettle, the usual tinker’s soldering outfit, a policeman’s discarded tunic, and the rags he stood up in. Within a year M’Andrew had buried the old shopkeeper, who had lived alone for years and was beloved by all, and reigned in his place.

Being an ambitious tinker, M’Andrew started a gombeen business with the old man’s savings, which he found by chance in the secret drawer of an old desk, and in a very short time became the best hated and most feared man in the district.

At first M’Andrew supported Sinn Fein enthusiastically, but when he saw law and order beginning to disappear, being now a man of property, he became alarmed, and tried to run with the hare and the hounds.

M’Andrew’s great opponent was the young parish priest, Father John, who, after serving as a chaplain with the British Army in France with great distinction—he had been decorated for bravery in the field by both the British and the French—returned to Ireland, having seen enough bloodshed for his lifetime.

Father John was a grand man both physically and morally and in the right sense of the words, and if only the majority of young Irish priests were up to the standard of Father John there would be little trouble in Ireland to-day.

When he became the parish priest of Annagh, Father John saw at once that M’Andrew was fast reducing the great majority of his parishioners, who were poor men with poorer mountain land, to a state of slavery, and realised that it only wanted two bad years in succession to put the whole parish under the gombeen man’s thumb.

At first he tried to keep the farmers away from M’Andrew’s shop; but this they resented, as it entailed a journey of many miles to the nearest town, and then they had to pay nearly as much as to M’Andrew. Next he denounced M’Andrew and his evil practices from the altar, warning the people of the consequences; but in spite of all the priest could do or say the gombeen man flourished.

From the very first Father John opposed the Sinn Fein movement both by word and deed, and when the first Sinn Fein organisers appeared in his parish he quickly hunted them away; but before he knew what was happening practically every young man in the parish had been enrolled, whether he liked it or not, as a soldier in the I.R.A. M’Andrew was quick to seize his chance of revenge, telling the people that the priest was a secret agent of the British Government—hadn’t he served in the British Army and taken the pay of the British Government, an enemy of the people?—and that he was doing his best to stand between them and liberty. In a week Father John was practically an outlaw in his own parish, and M’Andrew became the popular hero.

Though he still officiated in the chapel, Sinn Fein saw to it that he was paid no dues. For nearly two years this state of affairs continued, and it would have been impossible for the priest to live if the older and more sober members of his flock had not come to his house secretly in the dead of night and paid him their dues.

One day, when feeling ran very high, Father John opened his daily paper to see his own death reported, and a long obituary notice, probably the handiwork of M’Andrew.

It was a situation common in Ireland—the peasants blind to the virtues of their truest friend, and making a popular idol of their worst enemy: it is a sad thing that many Irishmen will always insist in believing what they wish to believe.

Father John was by nature a kindly and genial man, a lover of sport, of a good horse, and of the society of men, and those two years must have been a perfect hell on earth for him. Not that any one was ever openly rude to him; they just sent him to Coventry and kept him there, hoping to break his heart, and that by refusing to pay him any dues they would gradually freeze him out, and in his place would come one of those fire-eating young priests who would lead them to victory and freedom.

The summer of 1920 was wet and cold, with frosty nights during every month except July. Now, if your potatoes grow in boggy land, and there comes heavy rain followed by a night’s frost, not once but several times, you will have no potatoes, and probably very little crop of any kind. And if your living depends on the potato crop, you stand a good chance of starving, unless the gombeen man will come to your assistance.

By November the whole parish of Annagh practically belonged to M’Andrew, who held a mortgage on nearly every acre of tenanted land, and proceeded to bully the people to his heart’s content.

On a Sunday morning in December, at about 10 o’clock, the hour when the village usually began to come to life, the inhabitants were startled by the screams of a woman, and when they rushed to their doors saw M’Andrew’s servant running out of the village towards Father John’s house. M’Andrew had been murdered during the night without a sound, and the servant had no idea of what had happened until she went to his room to see why he had not got up. All M’Andrew’s books had been burnt, and afterwards the murderers must have cursed the day they did not set a light to the house as well.

On the next day the village woke up to find a company of Auxiliaries billeted in M’Andrew’s house and the yard full of their cars—a case of out of the frying-pan into the fire.

For some time past the police had known that men on the run were hiding in the mountains near Annagh; but though the area came within Blake’s district, it was impossible to keep any control over it, owing to the fact that the Owenmore river and the Slievenamoe Mountains lay between it and Ballybor.

The Auxiliaries spent the day fortifying M’Andrew’s house, and that night started operations, and the inhabitants soon realised that the British Empire was not yet an “also ran.”

Just as it was getting dark the Auxiliaries in Crossleys would suddenly burst out of M’Andrew’s yard, travel perhaps five or ten miles at racing speed, and then surround and round up a village or district, so that the numerous gunmen who had come from the south for a rest cure found it impossible to get any sleep at all.

The local Volunteers at once sent an S.O.S. to Dublin, and received the comforting answer that a flying column would arrive shortly in the district and deal effectively with the Auxiliaries. In the meanwhile they were to harass the enemy by every means in their power and carry on a warfare of attrition—in other words, if they found one or two Cadets alone—if unarmed so much the better—they were to murder them.

At first the local Volunteers were very much afraid of the Auxiliaries, Sinn Fein propaganda having taught them to expect nothing but murder, rape, and looting from the “scum of English prisons and asylums”; but after a few days had passed and nothing dreadful happened to man or woman, they took heart once more and started their usual warfare.

The Auxiliaries were commanded by a Major Jones, and on the Sunday following their arrival in Annagh Jones left alone in a Ford at an early hour to see Blake in Ballybor. The road crosses the mountains through a narrow pass, and near the top of the pass there is a small chapel, a school, a pub, and a few scattered cottages.

On his return Jones passed this chapel as the people were coming out from Mass, blew his horn, and slowed up. After passing through the crowd he noticed a group of youths standing on the right side of the road, and opened his throttle wide, thereby probably saving his life.

When the car was within ten yards of the group every man drew a pistol, and it seemed to Jones as though he was flying through a shower of bullets. However, though the car was riddled, and had any one been sitting in the other three seats they would all have been killed, Jones found himself uninjured, and the old “tin Lizzie,” responding well to the throttle, flew down the hill at twice the pace Henry Ford ever meant her to travel at.

That evening Father John called on Jones and apologised for the outrage, and Jones at once fell under the charm of the priest. Probably his astonishment at Father John’s visit had something to do with it, but in the days to come, when Father John supported his words by deeds, Jones learnt that his first impression had been a correct one.

Returning in the early hours of the morning from a raiding expedition to the south of Annagh, the Auxiliaries were surprised to see a tall priest standing in the middle of the road and holding up his hand. Fearing a trap—there was a blind corner just behind where the priest was standing—they stopped about two hundred yards off and beckoned to the priest to advance.

They were still more surprised to find that the tall priest was Father John, who, having received information after they had started that the Volunteers were going to lay trees across the road at this corner in the hope of smashing up the Auxiliary cars, had spent the whole night walking up and down the road in order that he might warn them of their danger.

Father John drove back to Annagh with the Cadets, and by the time they reached the village every Cadet swore that the priest was the finest man they had yet met in Ireland, and they didn’t believe there was a finer one.

From that on Father John accompanied the Auxiliaries on many a stunt, and there is no doubt that he gave them every help in his power and all information which reached him; but though he would travel anywhere with them, he would never accept hospitality from them, nor would he enter M’Andrew’s house.

About six miles from Annagh, in a hollow of the mountains, is the tiny village of Glenmuck, completely isolated from the rest of the world, and so situated that its presence was quite hidden until you literally walked on top of it. None of the inhabitants, who lived chiefly by making poteen in the winter time and going to England as harvesters in the summer, possessed a cart, for the very good reason that the nearest so-called third-class road was five miles away, and only a goat track passed within a mile of the place.

Here in due course arrived the flying column of the I.R.A., seventy strong, every man mounted on a bicycle and armed with a British service rifle and as many pistols as he could find room for. They were also the proud possessors of a Lewis gun.

As usual, the gunmen were billeted so many in each farm, and after being badly harassed for some time in the south, Glenmuck seemed like Paradise to them. The nights were spent in dancing, card-playing, and drinking poteen. Somewhere about noon the gunmen got up, and after breakfast visited each other in their different billets after the fashion of our troops in France, walking about openly with their rifles slung over their shoulders. The Lewis gun team passed their days teaching the boys and girls of the village the mechanism of the Lewis gun.

The leader’s idea was to give his men much-needed rest and amusement for a few days, and then to try and ambush the Auxiliaries; and probably they could have spent quite a long time resting here without the Auxiliaries having the slightest suspicion of their near presence. But war seems to be made up so largely of “ifs,” and the “if” in this case proved to be Father John.

When out riding on his rounds one morning, the priest noticed that most of the young people of his parish appeared to be gravitating in their best clothes towards Glenmuck, and suspecting a poteen orgy, he sternly commanded a young damsel to tell him why she was going to Glenmuck, and the girl told him. Father John rode straight back to Annagh, to be just in time to stop Jones from starting off on a raid in the opposite direction.

Jones first sent off a Cadet on a motor bicycle to Blake at Ballybor, sending him a verbal outline of his plan of attack on Glenmuck, and asking him to co-operate with the Auxiliaries from the other side of the mountains. He then turned out every Cadet in the place, left M’Andrew’s house empty to take care of itself, and made off at full speed in the direction of Glenmuck with the priest acting as guide.

They reached the nearest point to Glenmuck on the road at noon, and after leaving a small guard over the Crossleys, the rest of the company set out in open order across the mountain for the flying column’s lair.

The gunmen had had great luck in the south for a long time, and their luck still held. A youth, making his way across country to get a sight of the wonderful gunmen, happened to look behind him when on top of a rise, and saw about a mile away the oncoming Auxiliaries. Being a sharp youth he realised who they were, and ran for the village as fast as his young legs would carry him, and by chance ran straight into the leader when he entered the outskirts of the place.

Reaching the hill above the village the Auxiliaries made a last desperate rush down the slope, in the hope of catching the gunmen scattered in the different cottages, and so mopping them up before they could get together; but by this time the flying column had taken up positions on the top of the far slope above the village, and as the Cadets reached the cottages they came under heavy machine-gun fire.

Quickly realising what had happened, Jones ordered one platoon to make a frontal attack on the gunmen’s position, while he sent a second and third platoon to try to work round their flanks; the fourth platoon he kept with him under cover in the village.

Then followed a very pretty fight for an hour, by which time the gunmen, like the Boers of old, thought it was time to move on and take up a position on the next ridge.

Jones knew that if he could only keep in close touch with the flying column it was only a question of time before Blake, who would be guided by the heavy firing, would attack them in the rear, and that they would then stand a good chance of bagging the whole lot. The fight gradually worked across the mountains, the gunmen retreating from ridge to ridge, while the Cadets stuck to them like grim death, always striving to pin them down, and when they retreated to drive them in the direction from which Blake ought to appear.

Late in the afternoon heavy shooting suddenly broke out behind the gunmen, and the Cadets redoubled their efforts to close with them.

By this time the opposing forces had worked their way down the western slopes of the mountains almost as far as the high upland bogs, and directly the gunmen realised that they were likely to be surrounded, they broke and fled down a valley, closely pursued by police and Cadets. Unfortunately the light was getting bad, and the gunmen’s luck still held good. When they had gone about a mile, they came across a big party of country people with whom they mixed, and when the police came up with them it was impossible to tell gunmen from peasants—probably the former were busily engaged cutting turf while the latter looked on. Their arms were passed to the women, who hid the rifles in the heather and secreted the pistols and ammunition on their persons.

During the whole long fight Father John attended to wounded Cadet and gunman alike, always to be seen where the fight was hottest; and though his calling was conspicuous from his clothes and white collar, yet on several occasions the gunmen deliberately fired on him when attending to a wounded Cadet.

After the battle of Glenmuck the flying column was seen no more in that district, and for weeks the local Volunteers gave Jones no trouble.

Time after time Jones had received information that certain young men in and about Annagh carried arms, but whenever they were surprised in a shop or pub no arms could be found on them, and it was noticed that they always moved about in the company of certain girls.

Soon after the battle of Glenmuck the belles of the district received the shock of their lives when shopping in a town some miles away with these young men. About noon four Crossley loads of Cadets suddenly dashed into the town with two women searchers dressed in dark-blue uniforms, and that day the first real haul of revolvers and automatics was made. As usual, the men passed their arms to the girls directly they saw the Auxiliaries arrive, but this time no notice was taken of the men, while the girls, who on former occasions had stood looking on and jeering at the Cadets, found themselves quickly rounded up, and the women searchers soon did the rest.

After this the moral effect of the women searchers was so great that not a girl in the district dare carry arms or even despatches. The girls were not sure whether the searchers were women or young Cadets dressed up as women, and this uncertainty greatly increased their alarm.

About six weeks later Jones found out that a much-wanted Dublin gunman, called Foy, who had murdered at least two British officers in cold blood, was hidden in the district, and was being fed by his mother and sister, who lived about two miles from Annagh. Time after time the Cadets tried to surprise Mrs Foy or her daughter carrying food to Foy’s hiding-place, but always in vain.

Foy’s presence soon began to be felt in the district. Two Cadets, returning off leave in mufti and unarmed, were taken out of the train and murdered just outside the station, their bodies being left there for all who passed to see, and no man dared to touch the bodies until the police arrived. Next the Cadets were ambushed twice in one week, both times unsuccessfully.

Father John, who had hoped that at last his parish had returned to the paths of peace, was furious, and denounced from the altar all men and women who shielded murderers. Finally, after the murder of the two Cadets, he refused Holy Communion to Mrs Foy and her daughter, which is a very serious step for a priest to take.

And when remonstrated with, he replied that, sooner than not denounce and punish murderers and those who aided and abetted them, he would throw off his coat and become an Auxiliary. More power to you, Father John!

XVII.
THE BOG CEMETERY.

After many months of the Sinn Fein Terror, the town of Ballybor became a place of shadows and whispers. At night-time men saw shadows, real and unreal, moving and stationary, at every corner of the streets and in every lane; and during the day-time, when men met in the streets, they would only speak in low whispers to each other, and always keeping one eye over their shoulder.

Public opinion withered and died. Sinn Fein had no use for it—men became completely detached, mere spectators of the unchecked and uncondemned orgy of crime; like the younger generation in England, who waste a large part of their lives in picture-houses, gazing at films of vice and crime. And if a man had been murdered in the main street at Ballybor in the middle of the day, not a hand would have been raised to save the victim—the inhabitants would simply have regarded the incident in the light of a film, and then gone home to their dinners.

The oft-heard remark when a policeman has been murdered, “that it served him right for joining the R.I.C.,” epitomises the attitude of the majority of the Irish public towards so-called “political murder.” As a rule, an Irishman, on being asked if there was any news in the paper, would reply, “No, only the usual columns of murders and outrages.”

Walter Drake, as his name implies, was descended from an Elizabethan soldier who had settled in the west of Ireland and built a large house about two miles from Ballybor, and here for many generations the Drakes had lived, hunted, and farmed.

Walter Drake had at an early age entered the army through Sandhurst, but retired after six years’ service on the death of his father, and since then had lived at the Manor, spending a large part of his time helping his poorer neighbours in every way in his power: a quiet man of a retiring nature, a popular magistrate, and a good neighbour, but a determined Loyalist. Called up again in August 1914, he had served throughout the war with distinction in his old regiment, to return once more to his home.

Had Drake lived in any civilised country in the world, he would most assuredly have died in his bed when his time came, esteemed by all as a just, kindly, and honourable man; but, as in war, the best seem to be always taken, so it has been in Ireland. His only crimes appear to have been that he continued to act as a magistrate after receiving an order from the I.R.A. to resign his commission of the peace, and devoting himself to helping ex-soldiers in the town to get their pensions and trying to get grants of land for such as were worthy. The granting of land to ex-soldiers was bitterly opposed by the Transport Union, who wanted every acre for their own landless members. And probably being a personal friend of Blake’s and beloved by the police force, would constitute another crime in the eyes of the I.R.A.

On a certain Monday night the constable on duty at Ballybor Barracks reported that a great light could be seen in the sky, and thought there must be a big fire not far from the town. Going to the top of the barracks, Blake at once saw that a large house must be on fire, and judging from the direction the chances were that it was the Manor. Taking a dozen men in a Crossley, he at once went off there, to find the grand old house burning fiercely, and by the light of the fire he could make out a pathetic group of figures on the tennis-ground in front of the house.

The first person whom Blake met was the old butler, who told a tale now familiar in many parts of Ireland to-day. The household had retired at their usual hour of eleven, after which the butler had carefully closed up the house and gone to the servants’ hall to smoke a pipe before turning in. Soon afterwards he heard a loud knocking at the front door, followed by a volley of shots, some of which must have been fired through the windows, as he could hear the sound of falling glass.

The old man went and opened the front door, to be met by a ring of rifles, shot-guns, pistols, and electric torches, behind which he could make out the usual mob of masked ruffians. A strange voice then demanded Major Drake; and when the butler told them that the Major had gone to Dublin by the mail that day, a man handed him a letter telling him that in ten minutes’ time they were going to burn the house to the ground, and that he had better warn the inmates if he didn’t want them roasted alive.

The butler at once took the letter to Miss Drake, who read the following pleasant communication addressed to her brother:—

“Major Drake,—Owing to your aggressively anti-Irish attitude, we
have received orders to burn your house to the ground. You will be
given ten minutes to collect your clothes. By order.—I.R.A.”

The girl hurriedly slipped on a dressing-gown, and went down to the hall to find it full of the brutes sprawling in chairs and smoking. The leader came forward to speak to her, and she begged him to have mercy on her mother, who was old and in feeble health, and who would surely be killed by the shock of having her house burnt and being turned out into the night; and implored the man to take anything he wanted, offering him all the money she had and her mother’s jewellery. For answer the man pulled out his watch, and said that she had exactly ten minutes to get her old English mother out of the house, no more and no less.

Seeing that it was useless to argue with the brute, Miss Drake called the butler and her mother’s maid, woke up the old lady, dressed her the best way they could, and as the household passed out through the central hall, they saw men sprinkling the furniture and carpets with petrol. Hardly had they reached the lawn when the men rushed out past them. There was a violent explosion (petrol-tins bursting), and the house seemed to burst into flames in an instant. And here they remained on the tennis-ground, helpless and hopeless, their only crime Loyalty, until Blake found them there, silently crying.

Seeing that the house was gone, that, in fact, it was impossible to save anything, Blake put the Drakes into the Crossley, with the old butler and the servants, and drove them to a hotel in the town.

Drake had been seen motoring through Ballybor to the station on the Monday, and by that evening there was a whisper in the town that something had happened to him, but what the something was the whisper did not mention. During Tuesday rumour lay dormant. On Wednesday, however, rumour awoke and rapidly made up for lost time, and by that evening it was freely whispered throughout the town that Drake had joined the I.R.A.; that he had bolted to Canada to escape from the I.R.A., only to be taken out of the train on his way to Dublin by a flying column of gunmen, tried by a court-martial, condemned, and executed; that he had gone to Dublin to join the Auxiliaries; and lastly, that he had gone to London to get married.

On Wednesday morning Miss Drake, whose poor old mother lay in a state of collapse at the hotel, came to Blake in great distress, and implored him to find her brother. She was sure something must have happened to him, as she had wired twice, and then, getting no reply, had wired to the secretary of his club, where he had intended staying, and from whom an answer had just come to say Major Drake had not arrived.

Blake promised to do all he could, and started off at once to the station to make inquiries. Having found out that Drake actually did leave Ballybor by the mail train on Monday, he next sent an urgent cipher message to the authorities in Dublin, hoping they would be able to trace him there. Blake then set out for Knockshinnagh, the next station on the line to Dublin, about a mile from the small town of the same name, and situated in the midst of a vast bog, which stretches towards the foot of the mountains to the east and west, and runs nearly as far as Ballybor. Here, acting on the assumption that the rumour of Drake having left the mail train at this station was correct, Blake carefully interrogated the station-master and the three porters. One and all denied having seen Drake on the day in question—one porter, who had been there years, adding inconsequently that he did not even know him by sight, and thereby making Blake sure that he was on the right track at last.

That night Blake again visited the station-master at his house in the station after midnight; and pretending that he knew for certain that Drake had left the train at Knockshinnagh, warned the man of the serious consequences of refusing to give information. 1 A.M. is an unpleasant hour to interview armed men, and thinking that the police were uncomfortably near and the I.R.A. in the dim distance, the station-master made a full confession.

A few minutes before the limited mail arrived at Knockshinnagh on Monday, three armed and masked men had driven up in a Ford car, and directly the train pulled up had made straight for the carriage in which Drake was travelling. At once they seized him, and dragged him, struggling, out of the carriage to the car, and then drove off rapidly in the direction of Ballybor. Before the train pulled out, a stranger in a third-class carriage warned the station-master, in the name of the I.R.A., to give no information to any one. As no further information could be got from the station-master, Blake returned to the barracks, and set out again for Knockshinnagh after breakfast, to endeavour to trace the Ford from there.

The road from Knockshinnagh to Ballybor runs practically the whole way through a vast bog, which is drained by the Owenmore river, with a deep fringe of water-meadows on each bank. At intervals side roads connect up the villages on the higher ground near the mountains with the main road.

The police had covered nearly three miles of the road without getting any news of Drake or the Ford, when a sharp-eyed sergeant noticed the narrow tracks of a Ford turning up one of these side roads to the east. The car had turned the corner sharply, leaving a deep track of two wheels in the soft ground on the edge of the road.

Turning down this side road, they proceeded slowly without seeing any further car-tracks until they came to a long low cottage, standing back about fifteen yards from the road. Here they found tracks which showed that the car had pulled up at the door of the cottage, turned, and returned towards the main road.

Leaving his men outside, Blake entered with a sergeant, in time to see the owner bolting out of the back door, only to be caught by the sergeant and brought back. The man said his name was Moran, and protested his loyalty loudly before Blake could ask him a question.

In Ireland if you want information badly, often the best way to obtain it is to bluff your opponent into believing that you already know part of it, leaving him to guess as to how much you know. Blake took this line of attack with Moran, and asked him the names of the four men who had called at his cottage on the previous Monday in a car. But Moran knew the game as well as Blake, and denied that any car had been to his house lately, or indeed at any time, whereby Blake knew that the man lied, and had something to conceal.

He then threatened Moran that if he did not tell all he knew he would arrest him and keep him until he did, and at the same time took him outside and pointed out the old tracks of a car in front of the cottage. This had the desired effect, and at long last Blake thought their search was at an end.

Moran, it appeared, was the caretaker of an I.R.A. cemetery, or rather an old disused cemetery, where formerly unbaptised children were buried, and which now was used to bury Volunteers who had “gone to America.” On the Monday in question three armed and masked men had driven up to his house with a prisoner, and after trying him by “court-martial” in the cottage, had taken him to the cemetery, and made Moran help them to dig a grave, while the unfortunate prisoner looked on. They blindfolded and shot him, and finally forced Moran to put the body in the grave and fill it in. They then left.

Though hard pressed, Moran denied any knowledge of the identity of the masked men or their victim; and when told to describe the murdered man, gave a description which might have applied to hundreds of men.

Blake then ordered Moran to show him the cemetery, but when thus driven into a corner he took on the courage of a cornered rat, and though they tried for an hour not one inch would he go. Seeing that the man was desperate and would have died sooner than show them the cemetery, Blake returned to the barracks.

That night, as soon as it was dark, a strong police force rounded up the six leading Volunteers in Ballybor, and took them out to Moran’s house in two Crossleys, arriving as the full moon was showing over the top of the mountains.

At the first knock on the door Moran came out, his face contracted with fear, which turned to relief on seeing the uniforms of the police; but when he saw the six Volunteers he nearly collapsed. Blake now ordered Moran to lead them to the cemetery, and so great was the man’s terror that he started off across the bog without a word.

After walking over a mile in the moonlight, they came to a low ridge of limestone mounds running through the bog and parallel to the mountains. Here in a hollow was the old graveyard, which looked like a disused sheep-pen, such as the country people use for the rounding-up of mountain sheep when the different owners pick out their own sheep and lambs to brand them. The cemetery was surrounded by a stone wall, broken down in many places, and inside was a tangled mass of elder and thorn bushes.

After posting sentries round the graveyard, Blake made Moran point out the latest grave, and after the trembling man had shown them a mound between two bushes, he ordered two of the Volunteers to start opening the grave with spades brought by the police. Presently one of the spades met something in a sack, and on opening the sack they found the body of a short dark man—obviously a peasant—whereas Drake had been a tall fair man. On examination they found wounds in the body and left leg.

For a moment Blake was quite nonplussed—he had been so sure that the body would be Drake’s. He was certain that the station-master had spoken the truth, and there seemed no reason to doubt Moran’s evidence, though why he should be in such a state of terror was not plain. Further, it was now five days since Drake was supposed to have been murdered, and the body they had just dug up had obviously been in the ground two days at the most, probably only one.

A careful examination of the cemetery showed that there was no other recent grave.

Blake’s thoughts were interrupted by one of the Volunteers, a man called Brogan, asking with his tongue in his cheek and an impudent sneer: “Is yer honour satisfied now, and will we be after burying this poor fellow decently agin?”

Taking no notice of Brogan’s question, Blake told a sergeant to make the Volunteers carry the dead man to the Crossleys, and to wait for him there. After they had gone he made Moran go down on his knees and swear on his oath that the body they had dug up was the man who had been executed on the previous Monday; but Moran could only swear that he had been so frightened at the time that he had not taken any notice of the prisoner, but that to the best of his belief the body was the one he had buried. Moran then broke down, and had to be half-carried, half-led to his cottage, where they left him, and returned to Ballybor with the Volunteers and the corpse for a military investigation.

The failure to find Drake’s body in the bog cemetery forced Blake to follow up the other rumours regarding his sudden disappearance, but every rumour and clue failed them, and it looked as though Drake’s fate was to be added to the long list of unsolved Irish crimes.

Two days after the police had visited the cemetery, Blake received information that arms for a police ambush had been brought into Murrisk townland, and also that poteen was being freely made and drunk there.

Having arranged with a company of Auxiliaries stationed in Annagh to co-operate with him, Blake left the barracks with two Crossley loads of police and a Ford an hour before dawn one morning, and as the day broke the Auxiliaries and police started to close in a cordon on the village and outlying farms where they suspected the arms were hidden.

The first signs of life were two women running across a bog, and when followed one of them was seen by Blake with his glasses to throw a still into a bog-hole, while the other one took two large jars from under her shawl and smashed them together into pieces. The women were quickly rounded up, and on being taken to the nearest house, the police found six fully-dressed men well tucked up in two beds, and the remains of a huge fire in the kitchen, while the whole house reeked of poteen—good circumstantial evidence that the party of eight had spent the night running a still.

After a long and fruitless search for arms, Blake found himself close to Murrisk Abbey; so, after sending the Auxiliaries back to Annagh, he went to pay the mac Nessa a visit.

The old man was delighted to see him, and insisted that he should stay to dinner, and the police should have drink and food.

Blake and the mac Nessa dined alone, and over the port the old man started to tell Blake tales of his youth. After his second glass and the long day in the cold, Blake began to feel drowsy, and his thoughts wandered to Drake and the grave in the bog cemetery, only to wake up with a start, hearing the old man say something about a grave, followed by, “Is yer honour satisfied now?”

Apologising for his deafness, he asked the mac Nessa to begin again, and the old man told a rambling story of a butler of his young days called Faherty, whose chief recreation was shooting rabbits in the park during the summer evenings. Close to the park lived a pompous retired shopkeeper called Malone, who had a very fine red setter, which was always wandering in the park, like Faherty, after rabbits.

On several occasions Faherty and Malone had had words over the setter, and the climax was reached when Malone arrived at the Abbey one evening, purple with rage, and insisting on seeing the mac Nessa, burst into his study, accused Faherty of having shot his setter, and added that he knew that the dog was buried in a shrubbery at the back of the house. The mac Nessa at once called for Faherty; the three proceeded straight to the shrubbery with a spade, and Faherty was made to open the grave which they found there. After digging down a short way he came on the body of a cur dog, to Malone’s great astonishment and disappointment, and Faherty asked in a voice of triumph, “Is yer honour satisfied now?”

After Malone had gone home, the mac Nessa asked Faherty for an explanation, and the butler told his master how he had shot Malone’s setter by mistake in the dusk, and then buried him in the shrubbery. The following day he heard that Malone suspected him, and had heard of the funeral in the shrubbery, so the next night he shot a cur dog, and buried him on top of the setter.

On the way back to the barracks Blake could not help thinking of the similarity of the remarks of Faherty and Brogan when the bodies of the cur dog and the dark peasant were dug up, and that night he dreamt that he was opening an endless row of graves, and never knew whether he would dig up a cur dog or a dark peasant, and all the time he was hoping to find Drake’s body. At last he came to a grave where he was positive he would find Drake, and started to dig like mad, only to wake up and find his own red setter on his bed.

Blake now determined to renew his efforts to find Drake. He ordered the Head Constable to round up the same six Volunteers, and as soon as this was done set off once more for the bog cemetery. Making their way to Moran’s house, they learnt from his wife that the previous evening her husband had been removed by masked men with shovel hats and wearing black mackintoshes. The wife, noticing the black mackintoshes, accused the police.

Borrowing a couple of spades, the police then went to the graveyard, and as soon as the dark man’s grave could be found, Blake ordered the Volunteers to open it again, and at the same time watched Brogan’s face carefully. On the way out to the cemetery, Brogan had been laughing and sneering as on the former occasion, but directly he heard Blake’s order he went as white as a sheet, and began to tremble, and a look of terror leapt into his eyes.

Blake knew that at last he was on the right track.

None of the Volunteers moved, waiting for Brogan to give a lead, and Blake had to repeat his order, calling on Brogan by name to start digging. Pulling himself together with a great effort, the Volunteer commenced slowly to throw the earth out of the grave, the sweat, though it was a cold day, pouring down his face.

The lower Brogan dug the slower he dug, until at last, when he had excavated about two feet of soil, he suddenly fainted and collapsed into the shallow grave.

The police were by now strung up to the highest pitch of excitement, and a huge sergeant, who had been a great favourite with Drake, suddenly gave a hoarse shout, and, jumping into the grave threw Brogan out, and started digging like a madman, while the rest began to fidget with the triggers of their rifles and look ominously at the uneasy Volunteers.

Suddenly the sergeant’s spade met a soft resistance, and in a few seconds he had uncovered and opened a sack, to find, as Blake expected, the body of poor Drake with a huge expanding bullet hole through his forehead.

The next five minutes will always be to Blake a nightmare: the police went stark mad,—when highly-disciplined troops break they are far worse to handle than any undisciplined crowd,—and with a howl of rage made for the cowering Volunteers, ignoring Blake’s shouts; and to this day Blake has no idea of how he kept his men from taking revenge on the Volunteers.

Probably he would have failed but for the lucky chance of noticing that Brogan, who had come to, was trying to escape. The diversion of chasing Brogan brought the police back to their senses, and by the time he had been captured and brought back, discipline was completely restored.