the rebels throughout the south standstill, just beneath the and west, which pressure cor- big rock, on the top of which responded with the appoint- there was a bombing post, ment of a new Inspector- with orders to drop a flare General of the R.I.C. So as soon as the car was below, strong was the pressure grow- to enable the riflemen to ing that the rebel staff were aim in the dark, and to follow afraid of a collapse, and when up the flare with a shower of their secret service learnt that bombs. the I.G. would be motoring to Ballybor on this particular Wednesday night, they determined to ambush him in Knockbrack Wood, and to kill him at all costs. Knockbrack Wood lies along both sides of a main road for a distance of about a mile and a half, and in the middle the road makes a sharp bend to avoid a huge granite rock which towers above the trees and makes this corner quite blind. On the far side of this bend from the direction of Ballybor the road rises suddenly, so that a car going towards that place would be likely to approach the bend at a good pace, and be unable to avoid an obstacle or trench just round the corner. Here it was settled to make the attempt on the I.G.'s life, and on the Wednesday the local Volunteers, under the direction of staff officers from Dublin, started to make the preparations. By dark all was complete, except to cut a trench across the road, and a large party of Volunteers had taken up positions on each side of the road at the bend. It was expected that the I.G.'s car would be wrecked, or at any rate brought to a Patrick and Sheila waited until it was nearly dark, when they motored to Knockbrack Wood, leaving the car up a narrow lane in the wood, about a hundred yards from the big rock on the Ballybor side. They then retired to a safe distance to await events. After several hours of waiting they left the wood and walked up and down the road to Ballybor, as by this time they were half frozen with cold. Shortly afterwards they were joined by the Volunteer captain, and as it would soon be daylight, Patrick suggested to him that the men should be sent home. The Volunteer captain was a stupid fellow, and further, he resented any suggestion as to what he should do from Patrick; and the three of them-Sheila, Patrick, and the captain-began a heated argument in the middle of the road : the captain argued that an order was an order, and that he would keep his men there until the next night if necessary, or even longer. Patrick saw the mistake he had made, shrugged his shoulders, and started to return to the car with Sheila. Now their whole attention had been centred on the direction from which the I.G.'s car was expected to come, and the last thing they expected was a counter-attack from the direction of Ballybor; but as Patrick and Sheila turned to leave the Volunteer captain, they found themselves covered by a party of R.I.C., with Blake at their head, and at the same time heavy firing burst out in the wood on both sides of the road. Patrick and Sheila had no alternative but to put up their hands, but the Volunteer captain tried to escape, and was promptly shot by a constable. Blake asked what they were doing at such an hour on the highroad, and Patrick was starting his usual story of how he and his sister were on their way from Dublin to attend an urgent case in the country, but when he caught sight of his brother William standing behind Blake, he faltered and remained dumb. Before Blake could ask any more questions they had to jump to one side to avoid a Crossley full of Auxiliaries, which dashed past, and stopped a few yards beyond them, the Cadets at once jumping out and taking up positions on each side of the car with Lewis guns trained to sweep the road as far as the big rock. Blake, after ordering William and a constable to take Patrick and Sheila down the Ballybor road out of the line of fire until he could deal with them, took command of the Auxiliaries, and waited for the action to develop. By this time it was daylight, and the police, who had worked round the flanks of the ambushers, began to make it pretty hot for the men in the trenches. Now it is one thing to shoot an unfortunate policeman perched up in a stationary lorry in the middle of the road, and quite a different story when the policeman starts to shoot you in the back from behind a tree, and very soon the Volunteers broke from their trenches and started to stream down the Ballybor road. There was a momentary lull in the firing, broken by two hurricane bursts of fire from the Cadets' Lewis guns, and the Volunteers fell in little heaps on the grey limestone road; the remainder hesitated, and then ran for their trenches, to be met by a hail of bullets from the police, who had taken up positions commanding the trenches while the Volunteers were trying to escape by the road. Again they tried to escape along the road, and again the Lewis guns spat out a magazine of bullets whilst a man could count five, the noise of the guns being intensified by the dead wall of trees. The few Volunteers now left threw down their arms, put up their hands, and the fight was over. In the meantime William had taken his brother and sister down the Ballybor road until they came to the lane where the car was, and here At any rate to let Sheila go-surely the British Government did not wage war on women. he told them to wait. After a time. After the constable had retired up the lane there was a terrible silence for several minutes. Patrick and Sheila both realised too late that William must have been in the house when they started on their journey to Dublin for the arms, and that he must have gone straight to Ballybor to warn the police of the impending ambuscade. They knew that, even if they were not sentenced to death, they could not escape a long term of imprisonment, and that they had been betrayed by their own brother, but would not-or could notrealise that William had only done his duty. Suddenly Sheila burst into a passionate denouncement of William's treachery to his country and his own flesh and blood, to be stopped by Patrick with great difficulty, who, controlling his rising passion and terror by a great effort, implored William for their mother's sake to let them escape while there was yet Poor William was torn between love for his brother and sister and his duty to his King. In those short moments he went through the agony of hell, knowing well that if he refused to let them escape he would carry for the rest of his life the brand of Cain; on the other hand, if he let them go he would not only be betraying his King, but also he would ruin his own career, and probably Blake's as well. To William's great credit be it said, his sense of duty prevailed, and he refused to let them go; and to his great relief the unhappy scene was cut short by the sudden appearance of Blake. Shortly afterwards the constable returned, and reported to Blake that he had found a Red Cross car up the lane. Blake gave orders for the car to be brought on to the highroad, and after collecting his men, started for Ballybor with Patrick and Sheila prisoners in their own car. HONOURS EASY. BY C. E. MONTAGUE. Colin wanted to see this beneficent passion at work. So he captured one of the embassy's many cockroaches, and put it down in front of the tortoise's nose, like an early Christian presented to a lion. The tortoise eyed the offered feast, and mused deeply. The cockroach did not muse. It was a cockroach of action. Without any apparent need for reflection it bolted for cover, like a flash of blackness, right into the tortoise's shell, and hid itself in that profounder thinker's armpit. The cadet of a dynasty of ambassadors was charmed with the cockroach's wit. He filed the whole affair in a pigeonhole of his 'cute little mind. As he grew up he would often chuckle to think of it. Piquant parallels would occur to him. When Colin was twenty the war came. C'est beau, ça," he said, when he saw what was done on the spot by most of the young men that he knew. He was a connoisseur. He I. could tell a fine gesture. "It makes fools," he said, "of us scoffers. It is as if God had broken loose out of the churches. Little new peers like my dear cousin Grax are becoming patrician. The rich are fairly jumping through the needle's eye-flocks of 'em-sheep at a gap." Colin was not to be carried off his own feet by any rush to take arms. He made no holy excuses about the omission: his sense of humour saved him from that. The only kind of humbug that it would allow him to practise was humbug conscious and gleeful-not Pecksniff's humbug; only Sganarelle's. It was a vital interest to him, he demurely said, not to be dead. And how could a ruling class rule from the tomb ? Might not one honestly praise Father Damien without rushing off to nurse lepers? Besides, his elder brother was badly wounded already; life, he pointed out, might at any moment become vastly more worth living than ever. And yet the war, and the way that his caste thought about it, were not to be easily talked out of his path. Like lions, they straddled across it; like tortoises, they impended who may have done little harm. Colin was one of them. "G.H.Q., 5th Echelon," was his army address. By day he sat in a tin hut, properly warmed. His casement opened on the Channel's foam. A sergeant-major brought him forms to sign, and said, The place, sir, for the name is 'ere." He had a telephone soon-a great help in crying off dinner engagements whenever a more amusing one came. He made the right faces when any one called. He was always game for a round of golf with the Brigadier at Le Touquet. For these duties his qualifications were excellent French and Italian. He may not have borne any physical part in the great westward retreat. But how could he? What good would it do to wade into the sea? For three months Colin led a life of rude health, brightened by spirited tiffs with other saviours of the country. Ruder disputes going on elsewhere formed a dim, distinguished background for these engaging figures: battles and sieges, the Marne and the Aisne, the fall of Antwerp, the First Battle of Ypres. Colin was highly aware of the value of all this forest distance of tapestried gloom against which his own foreground figure was planted. He knew what was what. this was romance, like the whining of winds that have All II. blown over deserts of snow when they sniff at night round the house where a person, who knows what is what, lies in bed, with the firelight leaping or musing. Then came the Deluge. Or, rather, one of the Deluges. Colin would say: "Poor old G.H.Q. was made to be inundated and reinundated, like Holland, on proper occasions. Or it's like England, with Picts and Brythons and Angles and Normans all rushing it in their turns. All of us here are exconquerors, layer on layer of us. First to charge in were |