ALEC I When I came home from the column Henderson, the Quartermaster, told me glumly that the only fighting man we had left in our company area was Alec Gorman. The company, that splendid company that had been trained to form fours, turn, wheel, and march like, regular soldiers, the company was gone, and in its place, a solitary Cuchulain at the ford, stood Alec. Now, Alec had never belonged to us, he was too much of an idler. Idler, lounger at bars, tippler, scrounge, football fan, pry, gossip, and maker of quarrels: that was Alec. Every town has its own Irishtown and every Irishtown its Alec. He was known to everybody. He was welcome at every pub for miles around. Even the old women came to him to take sides in their fights. For instance, when he passed Kate Nagle’s door that old rogue would look out, or mount the three-legged stool she used to look over the lane wall with, and shout after him. ‘Alec Gorman, how high up in the world We’ re getting! You passed me by yesterday without as much as “Good morrow”!’ ‘Is it a man you want, Kate?’ Alec would shout back. ‘Ah, you blackguard!’ the old woman would bawl delightedly. ‘I’d get a better one than you in, the Salvation Army or the Incurable Hospital.’ ‘You ugly old bake, and you’re eighty if you’re a day! How well you wouldn’t ask if I’d a mouth on me.’ ‘Come in and search me, Alec boy.’ ‘Will you give us a look at the old stocking?’ ‘Come in, come in, putty-nose! ’ And to crown it all Alec would go in and talk to her by the hour. One night I was sent for by Alec to go to Miss Mac’s public-house. We stood by the bar sipping pints of porter. He had dropped his voice to a whisper, and the crowd drew back as it were to leave us more alone. Alec was very tall, a splendidly—built boy with a long bright face, a nose that was a little flattened by nature (which caused Kate Nagle to speak of him as she did), and great, blue, wandering eyes. He wore an old navy coat and riding—breeches, leaned a little over his drink and me, and with one hand fondling the glass held on with the other to a revolver in his breeches pocket. Now and again he called a halt to fling a joke at the red-haired barmaid or raise a squabble with one of the men at the bar. People came in and went out, old women with pint pots under their tartan shawls or little children with quart bottles wrapped in brown paper, and Alec spoke so low it was impossible to guess what he wanted. It seemed to have something to do with rifles that had to be shifted to a place of safety, but sometimes he called the rifles shovels, and sometimes butter-boxes (not to mention traps, yokes, and gadgets), and talked about a letter from the shop (which I took to mean Brigade Headquarters), and about the butter—boxes being in cold storage. He was also expecting Peter Keary, and he spoke Peter’s name literally without a movement of his lips, watching all the time from under his eyes to see if anyone was listening. It appeared, too, that during the evening he had found himself in fresh trouble. By his account Kate Nagle was standing quietly upon her three-legged stool to get a view into the road-way—at peace with the world as he said—when a quarrel blew up between herself and Najax opposite. Najax was a woman who leaned over her half-door a good deal; a pale, untidy, reckless, handsome woman with a wastrel of a husband and the temper of a fiend. Old Kate had been putting it about in her malicious way that Najax was a Free State spy, and within five minutes the argument between them had drawn half Irishtown to its doors. ‘We’re short of men and we’re short of guns,’ said old Kate, ‘but there’s bullets enough behind us yet!’ What did that mean, Najax asked the neighbours. What did it mean? Who were the bullets for? What were the bullets for? ‘To give you and your misbegotten likes the hunt,’ said Kate in a solemn and reverent tone, launching a spit that reached to the middle of the road. ‘Who’ll give me the hunt, you old serpent?’ screamed Najax. ‘Ireland has friends yet, Norah Gillespie!’ ‘May the devil chase the friends of Ireland— and your friends too, Antichrist!’ bawled Najax. ‘You never had friends but for what they could get out of you.’ Those were the words of Najax as reported to Alec by Kate Nagle. Innocent enough, you will agree, but Alec in his simple way went off into a rage. Who was the friend that stuck to Kate for what could be got out of her? Himself, of course, that was clear. Besides, it had been publicly wished that the devil might chase the friends of Ireland. What friend of Ireland was clearly indicated? Himself again. It was treason to the Republic and a libel on him. So Alec crossed the road to Najax’s, house, and stamped in on top of her, blustering and swearing. Najax retorted by giving him sauce. Then he lifted up a bath of sudsy water that was on the table before her and threw it at her head, leaving her with her own nightdress hung about her neck, dripping with water. The rest of the clothes that she had been washing he kicked all round the floor in a perfect fury. This was Alec when he was quite himself. Most of the men in the bar were British ex-soldiers. Since Alec was a child he had been listening to the stories they had to tell, stories about the wars in Africa and India and the big war in France. Now Alec had pushed them aside to make stories for himself, and they accepted the position without malice. I was listening to one of them crooning in a corner a song about the great war: The troopship now is sailing, and my poor heart is breaking. . The troopship now is sailing, all bound for Germany . . . when another came up to me and held out his hand. ‘I knew your father, Larry,’ he said. ‘Did you now?’ said I, not knowing what else to say, and shaking hands with him. ‘I did then.’ ‘Go on now, Mike,’ said Alec. ‘Unless you’re going to stand a drink.’ ‘I knew his father,’ said Mike, turning upon Alec. ‘A good soldier of her late Majesty, God rest her! I knew the father and I know the son. I won’t breathe a word, not wan word.’ He turned away from us. ‘Aren’t you going to stand that drink, you bloody _oinseach_?’ said Alec with a screech. Mike turned round on us again and lifted his right hand high in the air—a royal gesture. He wasn’t going to stand a drink, but he came back solemnly step by step while everyone in the bar looked on and listened. ‘When I was in South Africa ’ he said. ‘Ah, shut up about South Africa!’ said Alec. ‘What about the drink?’ ‘When I was in Pretoria, I went into a bar one day. There was three of us there. A bar, just like this. There is a young man behind the counter. “This and that,” says Mackerel, one of the men that was with me, calling for the drinks, “this and that.” The drinks are filled out. “Where are you from?” says Mackerel, looking closely at the young man. “London,” he says. “Did you ever see this before?” says Mackerel, pointing to. the badge in his own cap, it was the Munsters’ badge. “Maybe I did,” says the other. “Maybe you did too,” says Mackerel coolly. “Where’s that you said you were from?” “London.” “Say this after me,” says Mackerel— “I have wandered an exile ’mid cold-hearted strangers, Far, far from my home and the beautiful Lee.” “Go on now,” says the man. “Say it,” says Mackerel sweetly. “I will not say it,” says the other. “Say it, I tell you,” says Mackerel, cooing like a dove. “No,” says the other, “I won’t.” “Do you know what you are?” says Mackerel in a flash, jumping the counter like a three-year-old, “you’re an informer from Ireland,” and, says he, whipping off his belt, “so help me, Christ, you’ll never leave this bar alive.”’ Just as he finished the story Peter Keary strolled in. He saluted everyone at the bar. The old soldier touched his cap and stood back. ‘Evening, sir.’ He turned to me again and went on in a whisper, ‘That’s true, d’ye understand? True, every word of it!’ Then he stood to attention and rapped out an order: ‘The Fusiliers will spring to attention, fix bayonets and slo-o-o-pe. Taking the word from the Brigadier.’ And still at attention he marched away to the farther corner of the bar. ' There was nothing secretive about Peter Keary. He stood a little aside from us, and leant over the counter quizzing the barmaid. In a moment the atmosphere of mystery with which Alec loved to surround himself was dissipated. Peter was small, gay, and quizzical, with a diminutive puckish face and curiously flickering nervous eyelids. ‘You’re wanted at home, Alec,’ he said at last. ‘Ginger and I will be up after you.’ Alec obeyed him, and shortly after Peter and I followed. It was a cold gusty night in early spring. Between the public-house and Alec’s home there were cottages at each side of the roadway, and, at one side there was a low wall and steps down into a little lane; it was from this that old Kate used to watch on her three-legged stool. The road before us was pitch-black, with only one lamp showing where the steps were. The cottages were white in the darkness, like snow or a very faint moonlight, and our feet started a metallic echo from the flagstones. I spun round when I felt the touch of a hand upon my shoulder, and had almost pulled a gun before I saw who it was. But it wasn’t a soldier, nor a plain-clothes man. It was Najax. Najax, whom I had not spoken to since I was a little boy at school, and she, a girl of seventeen, had been walking out with a colour-sergeant in the British Army. She had obviously been expecting me; her door was open and above the half—door one could see into her little smoky kitchen. ‘Larry,’ she said shyly, ‘I want to speak to you.’ Peter walked stolidly on, and I saw there was nothing else for it but to go in with her. She shut and locked the door behind us. ‘Larry,’ she said in a low, bitter voice, ‘did you hear what happened me?’ " On the table was a bath in which clothes (the same, I thought, as Alec had kicked about the floor on her) were steeping under a washing board. Najax’s arms—fine stout arms they were —were bare to the elbows, and red, having been freshly dried, but I saw that she had been unable to finish her work, that her fury and humiliation had been too much for her. I said something about not minding these things. ‘Alec Gorman came in and thrown that bath of water over me. As sure as God is my judge, Larry, he did; and I that never said one unkind word to him. Thrown the water over me and kicked all my nice clean things about the floor.’ ‘Alec drinks too much,’ I said, ‘and when he has a drop in there’s no answering for what he’ll do. But he had no right———’ ‘And it isn’t that I mind so much,’ she broke in, ‘but he called me—he called me—a spy.’ She was scarcely able to bring out the hateful word, and looked up at me with blazing, reckless eyes suffused with tears. ‘In my own house he called me a spy. He was put up to that, Larry, he was put up to it, and it was that shameless jade across the way put him up to it, that shameless———’ And this time she was overtaken by tears, real tears, and sat down by the fire, sobbing fiercely with what the people call a _tocht_ in her. Then as suddenly she stopped weeping, and tossing the dark hair passionately back from her eyes she looked at me with wild-cat determination. ‘I’ve no one to avenge me, Larry,’ she said (she meant her husband, I knew), ‘and I’m telling you only because this night I’ll go across to that wan and drag her from her bed and crucify her; and I’m telling you, Larry, because I may do her mischief, and you’ll know why.’ Her kitchen was bare and dirty; there was a ladder leading up to the loft; a strip of old curtain half hid the bedroom, in which a sacred lamp was burning before a picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour and casting a greasy light upon the pillows of the bed. Over the mantelpiece under which we sat was a picture of the Sacred Heart. The tiny window was covered by an old red petticoat, and in the light of an oil lamp bracketed to the wall the white room, with its deal table and bath, its handful of plain chairs, looked hateful and bleak and sordid. And as I became conscious of it I became conscious of an intolerable feeling of pity in myself, that pity which is the curse of our garrulous and emotional race. She was looking up at me, haggard and fierce, and I was aware of the fine modelling of her nose and cheeks, of the hawklike intensity in her, and in a moment I was sitting beside her trying to soothe the wild look out of her eyes. She was very like a child, and immediately began to cry, softly and without bitterness. I put my hand about her shoulder and began to tease her. My hand slipped from her shoulder to her waist. Suddenly she stopped crying, and taking my free hand in her two damp rough hands, she pulled the fingers this way and that, and told me in a voice half-broken by little sobs that she was no spy; that she had no sympathy with the. boys, but wouldn’t give one of them away for all the money of Ireland; that she had a cruel life; that she found it hard to be honest when she didn’t know at night where to-morrow’s dinner would come from. Often I had seen faces like hers under a street-lamp on the bridge or along the quays. On some bleak and pelting night perhaps such a face would hurry past me, and I would stand for a moment leaning over the parapet, wondering what had driven that terrible look into it, until the face itself would emerge from the blackness of the water below and send me shivering homewards. And so—my arm was about her waist, and when I rose to go she held it there with her hand, so that I had to walk to the door with her in that fashion. I was tempted to kiss her, but my eyes lit upon her long black shawl hanging behind the door and I remembered those faces upon the bridge. Instead of kissing her I made her promise not to fight the old hag opposite, and this she did with the same ready, childish acquiescence. The night was cold and I ran until I reached the lane where Alec lived. He lived in a sort of lane off a lane, a tiny passage that contained one street-lamp and one house. His sister opened to my knock, and going in I saw Alec and Peter at the table behind a barricade of washing. They were having tea, and I sat with them at the rough deal table and drank tea out of a soldier’s ponny. The back door was open and Alec’s mother was bringing in washing because the skies threatened rain. I was bombarded with questions about Najax, and then Peter must be told about what happened previously. Peter was sore at it, and with his little face puckered up into a hundred wrinkles he began to remonstrate with Alec, but Alec had almost forgotten the incident and it was only when Peter called it a low-down trick that he began to defend himself. Then his mother (who felt it her bounden duty to join in any remonstrances addressed to Alec) left her work, stood at the foot of the table, and rubbing her hands in her coarse apron and wiping her almost non—existent nose, said: ‘That’s right. Speak to him, Mr. Keary, speak to him. And speak to him you, too, Larry. Indeed, it’s a shame for him to do a thing like that to a woman that never said a hard word to him, and what will all the neighbours say about us, I’d like to know?’ But Alec told her in a cross voice to shut up for Christ’s sake, and Peter realised the futility of saying any more. After a while Alec and Peter went out into the yard, and through the window I saw them climb over the roof of the jakes into the field beyond. I was left alone with the mother and daughter. The mother was tall and like Alec in appearance, only her nose was phenomenally short and her jaw squarer and slacker. Everything she did was done in exactly the opposite way from Alec’s; while every movement of his was vital she worked confusedly and helplessly. She cried frequently and drew her hand across the place where her nose should have been. ‘Wisha, Larry,’ she said, ‘I dunno how ’t’ll all end, I don’t so. And I can’t talk to Alec, and I’m sure he’ll do something dreadful on me one of these days. I brought him up hard, Larry, and I never grudged him the packet of cigarettes and the bottle of stout, but it’d be dreadful if he was swep’ off to his death on me now.’ ‘Shut up, maa!’ her pretty daughter drawled. ‘Why should I shut up, child? Sure, he never tells me anything he does except what I hears from the neighbours or what the soldiers tells me when they comes to the house for him. Oh, Larry, it does take the heart out of me when I sees them soldiers walking in with their guns and bayonets and bombs!’ ‘Oh, shut uuup, maaaa!’ the pretty daughter drawled again. ‘I won’t shut up. Two packages of tea they stole from me the last night they were here, the blackguards, and a pound of cangles! And they tuk the pitcher of Alec in his first knickers, and when I told them how much the knickers cost me the sergeant said, “Well, ma’am, if it’s any consolation to you, the pair he have on: now is the last he’ll wear in this world.” Oh, _Dhe_! oh, _Dhe_!’ She was sniffling miserably once more, her hands crossed upon her portly bosom when Alec came in carrying two rifles. He looked at her with growing rage. ‘Lord God Almighty, that woman is bawling again!’ he shouted. ‘Aren’t you ever done whinging, huh?... Ach, go on off ou’ that to bed.... Take your ma up to bed, Josie!’ ‘I suppose I’m better,’ his mother sniffed. ‘Is there anything else you want for the night?’ ‘There isn’t. Did you get me the fags?’ ‘I did not. Couldn’t you have got them yourself below at Miss Mac’s?’ ‘Sure, they won’t do me for the night, will they? Josie, run down to the corner shop for two packets of Woodbines.’ ‘Gi’ me the money and I will.’ ‘Where in the name of God do you think I’d get the money? Here, ma, give Josie the fourpence.’ His mother pulled out a dirty old purse from the pocket of her coarse apron and began to count the money. This was a cause of further sighs. Meantime, Peter had come in and he and I were examining the rifles for rust. And the clack of the bolts and the snapping of the triggers mingled with the clink of money in the old washerwoman’s palm and Alec’s audacious jests, when another voice joined in; it was the crotchety voice of Alec’s father grumbling upstairs about being disturbed. ‘Me peace of mind destroyed and me night’s rest ruined on me,’ he was shouting. Alec stood at the foot of the stairs and yelled up at him. ‘Ah, shut up you! Do you think you’re in a mortuary chapel?’ ‘That’s the way he speaks to his own father!’ the voice upstairs commented bitterly. ‘A lot you have to complain of!’ Alec cried gleefully. ‘Pity ’tisn’t out in the middle of the Sahara you are.’ ‘Bringing home rifles in the middle of the night when honest men are in bed!’ ‘Ay, then, and I’m only sorry it isn’t, a ton of dynamite I have until I’d blow you ou’ that bed.’ "Better fed than taught, that’s what you are!’ the old voice snarled down at us. ‘Go on now, go on now!’ said Alec with a roar of laughter. ‘If you’re good, I’ll take you out for a nice ride in your pram!’ The grumbling subsided into a moan and the heavy stepping of naked feet on the boards above. But Alec’s mother, paying. homage to a fallen majesty, spoke in a whisper; Josie was sent off for the cigarettes, and the old woman moved on tiptoe to the cupboard and fished out two candles. These she lit and fixed carefully on the table in their own droppings, and still on tiptoe with lips pursed up like a child she quenched the lamp. After a few minutes Josie came back, and the pair of them crept upstairs on their stockinged feet. Peter and I were duly impressed by this dumb show, and for a little while talked in whispers, until some joke of Peter’s sent Alec off into a shout of simple mirth; then we pulled our chairs closer up to the table and began to clean and oil the rifles. II We seemed to have been hours upon the road; hours, and we were dizzy with fatigue and our fingers clung to the cold rifles. None of us had a watch to measure the time by. We had smoked almost all our cigarettes, and tramped up and down the shelterless country road in the darkness. The night was cold and clear; the wind had dropped, and on the horizon a few, faint stars were burning. Suddenly we heard, dull and far away, a slight boom that seemed to come out of the very heart of the country. We stopped. ‘There goes the bridge,’ said Alec. ‘Thanks be to Christ!’ ‘Give them a few minutes to get away,’ said Peter. We listened in silence and once again we heard that dull reverberation, only more clearly because we were expecting it. ‘You men can say what you like,’ said Alec, ‘but no barn will see me this night. I’m going where there’s a bed waiting for me. Are you game?’ At that moment there were few things we should not have been game for. We followed him across the fields to a quiet suburban road on which there were a bare half—dozen houses, houses of the well-to-do people. Here among a mass of disused stables we tried to find a hiding-place in which to leave our rifles for the night. At last Alec hit upon the idea of putting them down a chimney-stack. If we had not been so confoundedly sleepy neither Peter nor I would have listened to him, but, because we were, he got his way. Taking a ladder and a piece of rope he climbed on to the roof of the stables. I handed him up the rifles and he tied them together, dropped them down the chimney-stack—the fireplace, by the way, had been built across—and secured the rope to a nail inside. It was only after we had cleared away the ladder again that it struck him there was no protection for the rifles if rain came on, but by this time we shouldn’t have minded throwing them into the river to get rid of them. It was beautiful up there where we were. The whole valley of the river was spread out beneath us. The river itself, fringed by a few street-lamps, glowed here and there, and on its bank a factory and a railway station were busily lighted. Further off was the city, distinguishable by its massed lights that outlined on either side the two great hills flanking it. One could pick out certain familiar spots on the hills by the line that the winding street-lamps made. As we turned up the avenue towards the house a dog began to bark; another answered him, and in a moment the whole place was a riot of yelping dogs; the barking came to us like an echo from very far away, and it seemed as if even in the city the damned brutes scented our approach. For the first time that night I was nervous, and tugged with all my might at the old house-bell. It pealed through the silent rooms within and wakened yet another dog who added his voice to the chorus. There was no other answer and we tugged again and again. At last we heard the pattering of bare feet in the hall. The door opened an inch or two and we pushed it in, on top of an old man who, with one hand, was holding up the breeches that sagged about his toes. I switched an electric torch in his face for a moment; a bleak, wintry, old face it was, the flesh converging in deep hollows to the unshaven chin, a toothless, snarling mouth and above it two sleepy, cold, blue eyes. ‘We want a bed for the night, neighbour, said Alec. ‘There's many wants beds that can’t afford them. Who are ye?’ ‘Never mind. Any place will do us. I suppose we’re late for supper.’ ‘Is it the hunt is after ye?’ ‘Never mind, I say,’ Alec exploded, losing his temper. ‘All right, all right.’ ‘One good bed is all we ask. The master is away?’ ‘He is away.’ ‘A sound judge, the master! There are a few things we’d like to say to him if he came back. The old man showed us into a long low room lined with bookshelves. There were two beds in it, and with a sigh of relief Alec threw his cap on the dressing-table and began to unpin his collar. ‘Ye’ll be quiet now?’ ‘We’ll be quiet, neighbour, don’t you fret. You go and have a good sleep. And try to forget there did anyone call, because we’d leave more than a wife and children to regret us.’ Old Rip Van Winkle pattered away. Alec, having removed his tie and collar and boots, went heavily on his knees, and Peter after a little while did the same. Peter’s prayers were short, and before sleep overcame me, he was lying beside me in the bed; but my eyes closed on Alec’ s devotions, and I remember him foggily with his eyes turned up to heaven, beating his breast and mumbling fervent ejaculations. When I woke it was morning and Peter had, gone. I glanced round me; saw that Alec was asleep, and noticed with satisfaction the three revolvers lying on the little table between his bed and mine. I dozed again and awoke slowly with an extraordinary feeling of oppression. The room was as still as before, but it was much colder, and as I opened my eyes I found myself staring blankly into the face of a man in civilian clothes who was sitting on the end of my bed, smoking a cigarette. Then I noticed that this strange man was holding a service revolver upon his knee, and a sick feeling of hysteria began to penetrate deep into my bowels. I turned my head cautiously and saw Alec sitting up in bed very wakeful, the clothes drawn tight about him. The room was full of men; I took them in one by one only to realise that I was lying on the bed with nothing but a singlet on. ‘Well?’ asked the man with the gun, and I could only grin vacantly. Then I remembered the three revolvers and realised that we would face the firing squad because of them. On the instant I was broad awake. I looked at the little table—the revolvers were gone! As if all too clearly reading what had been in my mind the man with the gun rapped out: ‘Now, where’s that gun of yours, Ginger?’ ‘Bloody well you know he have no gun.’ Alec had rapped out the reply before I could speak. ‘Oh, no, he haven’t,’ the other said mockingly. ‘Well, Ginger?’ ‘I haven’t a gun,’ I said, taking my cue from Alec. A titter went round the room. But for the life of me I could not guess what had happened to the revolvers, and for a moment a delicious sensation of relief went through my body; but only for a moment, and again the misery of a trapped creature sank deep into my bowels. ‘Get up!’ one of the men ordered, and Alec and I got up and dressed. Meanwhile, the soldiers pulled drawers and bedclothes about in the search for arms, for arms that miraculously were not there. Then we marched down to the waiting lorries through lines of laurel and laburnum. There were more soldiers outside and we were greeted with cheers and gibes. An officer struck Alec on the side of the face with his clenched fist. These were only the details: as were the drive through quiet suburbs and early morning streets, the clerks and shopgirls going to their work, the girl I recognised upon the pathway and in whom I said good-bye to everything I held dear—and how much dearer now—houses and people and things, home and work and pleasure, freedom certainly, perhaps life. We were at the Courthouse. We went up the steps; the clerks were turning in by ones and twos and looked at us curiously. We were taken downstairs and left in a filthy underground cell where five or six other men sat up and stared at us. Conversation was impossible, for one of the group was almost certain to be a spy. About an hour later Alec and I were called out together into the dark corridor and two or three officers set upon us. ‘Where are the bombs, Ginger?’ ‘Now, Gorman, you’d better say where the dump is.’ ‘We have no dump,’ Alec said sullenly. ‘No dump? No dump? Where are the three skits you had last night in Norton’s?’ ‘We had no skits.’ ‘Oh! no. And you had nothing to do with the bridges or the trapmine either? Mr. Peter Keary has told us about that already. Now, out with it if you want to save your skin!’ Peter? So Peter was caught too! ‘If he told you all that why didn’t he tell you the rest?’ Alec snarled. In an instant he was grovelling upon the ground with a blow from a revolver butt, and one of the inquisitors kicked him in the stomach. ‘None of your backchat. You’re for it. D’ye hear me? You’ll get yours. Now where are those guns?’ Alec began to groan and the groan rose to a squeal as the officer kicked him again. The officer shouted at him to be quiet, but Alec only screamed louder, like a man who was in mortal pain; then I said something wild—I don’t remember what it was—and found myself being throttled, while somebody hammered my head against the wall. It was all pitiably dark, and I could only see the shadow of the man who was throttling me. We were chucked back into the cell,I without a collar and with the neck torn from my shirt; Alec whining and holding his stomach. When we got inside I put my hand on his shoulder and said something; he continued whining, and I was astonished at his softness. He threw himself upon a mattress in a corner, his knees doubled up to his stomach, and lay there, silent but for an occasional groan, until we were called out again. Then I began to get worried for him, because he had to be helped out of the cell and back, but if it served no other purpose it saved us from anything more serious than a chucking about and another throttling for me. That went on for the best part of the day; in the evening I saw a friendly face among the officers outside; an officer that had been in our battalion at one time, and, succeeded in getting him to order our removal to the prison. An hour later the prison gate closed behind us. As we walked in darkness up the old garden path and through the Governor’s office into one of the halls of the prison I felt in my soul it was for good. At first I stood stupefied in the great circular pit, lit by hissing blue and yellow gasflares that flickered wildly in the breeze blowing through four barred gateways. An iron staircase up to an iron balcony with high barred windows and a circle of white faces; above that another balcony and more faces peering down at us through the half-darkness, that was what I saw. A Dantesque vision. The flags under my feet were islanded by pools of rain-water, and in spite of the wind there was a stink of refuse and humanity. From the balconies, each with its four great barred windows, long corridors of cells went off into the three wings of the prison. Alec and I were put into a tiny cell lit by a single gasflare; a cell scarcely big enough for one man, with an unglazed window next the ceiling. A man was sitting upon the floor hammering at a piece of bright metal on a metal rod. He was making a ring for his girl, he said, and it was a shilling piece which he had impaled upon-the rod. After a while he got up and made tea for us in a dixie which he hung over the gasflare. Then we all went out on to the balcony for the saying of the rosary, and after that lay down upon two mattresses stretched upon the floor, and covered ourselves with a few blankets. When the three of us were lying close together we completely filled the available floor space though another mattress had to be left upon the waterpipes for a fourth man. After a time Alec began to shiver and complain again; he couldn’t sleep, he said, and was very ill with the pain in his stomach. He went along the corridor to the latrine and got sick before he reached it. The other man, who was an ex-soldier, then insisted upon sitting up, striking a match, and showing us the wound he had received during the great war. ‘You’ve nothing wrong with you as bad as that,’ he said angrily to Alec. ‘Look at me! Feel my ribs! Feel my ribs! There isn’t as much as a pick of flesh on my bones from it!’ ‘Why don’t you talk to the doctor?’ I asked. ‘He says I’m shamming, the blackguard!’ said the ex—soldier settling down again with a groan. I fell into a half sleep while the men on either side of me turned and twisted and sighed; when I woke it was to see a lantern shining upon me on the floor. It was the officer of the watch staging another capture—this time it was Peter. I sprang up and lit the gas. Peter wore no collar and his face was deathly pale. He sat down on the waterpipes with his head between his hands; then he took off his cap and I saw that he was wearing about his head a bandage, stained with blood. He was trembling all over and did not. speak. The sentry below bawled out to quench the light and I did so. Only then did Peter tell us what had happened to him. He had been captured by a second party of soldiers on his way in; they had taken him with them to where our fellows had laid a trapmine the previous night, and tried to make him dig it up. But Peter had been fly and refused to dig; then they tried to make him run with the intention of shooting him as an escaping prisoner. He had refused to run and, in a rage, one of them had fired, wounding him slightly in the head. As he still stood his ground they brought him back, and that night, after we had left, hell had broken loose in the Courthouse. They had taken one man to the top of a flight of stairs; flung him down; prodded him with bayonets, and kicked him about the floor. Peter did not say much but we had good reason to know what he meant. Then, suddenly, Alec began to moan and shiver again, and I made Peter and the other keep still. Next morning, to my great surprise, Alec woke in what, even for him, was high spirits. He went about the prison, chatting with everyone he knew and laughing boisterously. It was only after a while that I got him alone. He told me that on the previous morning he had pushed the revolvers in behind a shelf of books just as the soldiers were coming in the hallway. This gave me a fresh start. If the old man had really given us away, as Alec suspected, he must find the revolvers sooner or later and perhaps send us before a court-martial. But it was no use telling Alec anything of that kind then. He was full of plans for an escape of all the prisoners. He had made them up during the night. We were to dig a tunnel or fight our way through the guard. It was perfectly simple, perfectly simple to himself. And it was only towards evening that the older hands succeeded in persuading him that one idea was as impossible as the other. Then he returned to the cell, looking wan and distraught, began to complain again of pains, and lay on the floor for hours without speaking. Next day he looked so ill we called in the prison doctor. The doctor left some iodine and ‘black jack’ (the only medicine he was ever known to administer). That day there were several rows between Alec and the original occupant of the cell, who was angry that the doctor had paid attention to Alec, and insisted on hammering at his silly old ring in the cell. He kept on mumbling indignantly to himself about shamming and malingering until at last Alec, in a towering rage, caught him in his two powerful arms, carried him out to the corridor, and swung him over the balcony rail, threatening to toss him into the suicide net. After this the ex-soldier' refused to speak to any of us again. Within four or five days I was shocked at the appearance of Alec. He looked like a man in galloping consumption. His cheeks had fallen in, he could not bring himself to eat, and now and again he rose and tramped fiercely up and down the corridor alone. When Peter and I approached him he looked at us blankly, as though he did not recognise us. Then he answered offhand and resumed his tortured walking. Every muscle in his face seemed to be drawn tight, and there was a glint of insanity in his eyes. Several times each night he woke us with his muffled shouting and groaning, and his powerful limbs tossed this way and that, in the grip of his dreams. Another thing I noticed. He came to be too friendly with the officer of the watch, and after the count each evening, he spoke to him, sometimes in the cell, sometimes apart in the corridor. His overtures were marked; there was a whine in his voice, and he protested too much about his innocence. It was the officer of the watch who suggested to him that he should sign a declaration of allegiance, and, after a night of indecision that was a torture to Peter and me, Alec agreed. He signed, but that was all that came of it; those outside knew whom they had to deal with as well as we, and Alec remained a prisoner. Then one evening, without a word to either of us, he disappeared with the officer of the watch. It raised no comment at the time, because men were frequently taken out to be questioned in that way, but Peter and I smiled at one another and shrugged our shoulders. We knew that Alec had agreed to show some of our hiding—places to the soldiers. And when an hour passed and Alec did not return we had to endure the questions of scores of men who hung about our cell, coming in, going out, passing a sly remark, and nodding their heads grimly. It was only when the ex-soldier, looking up from his ring-making, came out with the ugly word that was in all our minds that Peter lost his temper, and after that the squabble between them diverted us until midnight. All next day we sat in misery, and the next, and the next. Then because in prison no mood can last for long without bringing disaster we both began to cheer up. I think the cause of the good humour on my part was a parcel I received early in the morning of the fourth day; it contained only a big wheelcake and a note. ‘DEAR LARRY,’ the note ran, ‘I enclose a cake which I made specialy for you. I hope you will like it. Your poor mother is looking very well but she is looking very sad poor woman. I was glad to see one you know at home again and he appolijised. He said you were speaking to him about me as well as Mr. Keary for which I am truly grateful. I hope in God to see you home again soon.—Yours truly, NORAH GILLESPIE. _XXXXX_.’ It was the first news we had received of Alec, and though it confirmed our worst suspicions, we were not angry with him. We were curious only to know what he had done or said to get himself out. We did not even blame him; we loved him too much for that, and in our hearts we knew that he had done the only thing it was in his nature to do. But this thinking of him, seeing him visit Najax and stand at the bar to drink his pint with the rest, stimulated our curiosity; not only did we want to know how he had bought his release; we wanted to hear him explain it all, word for word, to the neighbours, to old Kate, to Najax, to Mike and his companions—as we knew he would. In a way we were happy, as happy as we could be with those three revolvers lying behind a row of books in Norton’s house, for these, as often as we thought of them, chilled us again. And that evening, as though to satisfy our curiosity, a fresh batch of prisoners arrived; amongst them a poor innocent from our own locality, a suspect. We fell on him together with our questions. He looked at us in stupefaction. ‘Didn’t ye hear?’ he asked, and we were too wild with him to answer. ‘Sure, God Almighty,’ he cried, ‘the whole world know of it by now. How he took them out some place there was rifles hid? In a chimney?’ ‘Yes, yes,’ said Peter and I together. ‘And went up on the roof with them to show them there was no trap. And flung two of them head and neck back into the yard, and jumped clear off at the other side into a lot of bushes and brambles.’ ‘Alec,’ said Peter, ‘our Alec. He did? He got away from them?’ . ‘Of course he got away. He jumped from the roof in the darkness.’ The poor innocent raised his voice until it pealed through the corridor and brought out head after head to inquire what was up. ‘The grandest, the most desperate, the most magnificent escape ever made. He have a charmed life. Didn’t I see him with my own two eyes swaggering about the cross yesterday with a gun in his breeches pocket? Didn’t I? Didn’t I see him drinking at Miss Mac’s, and visiting the neighbours? Didn’t I? More than poor devils like us can do without being caught. He have a charmed life I tell you!’ Visiting the neighbours! How like him it was, our own inimitable Alec. Then Peter held out his hand to me. ‘We’re safe,’ he said in a low voice. ‘We’re safe,’ said I. ‘And whisper,’ said the innocent, putting his arms round both our shoulders and winking solemnly to right and left. ‘I’ll tell you something I wouldn’t tell the others. Between you and me Alec is at his old tricks again.’ ‘How so?’ we asked. ' ‘How so? Look here to me!’ He pulled out a dirty copy of the newspaper for the previous day. ‘Read that and tell me in confidence what you think of it.’ He pointed to a short paragraph at the foot of one page. ‘Dunmerial, the beautiful suburban residence of Mr. Edmund Norton, was burned to the ground in the early hours of this morning by a party of men, wearing masks and carrying petrol tins and revolvers. The Caretaker, Michael Horgan, an old man, is in hospital, suffering from exposure and injuries said to be the result of a beating. He is not expected to recover.’ ‘There!’ said the innocent with a triumphant glance. ‘there now! “He is not expected to recover?” What do you make of that?’