My road always lay through the centre of the city, and coming to College Green one met the inevitable paper boys bawling their wares, and if one still had curiosity enough to buy another issue, one opened it to find “Auxiliaries capture a Number of Armed Civilians,” or “Mysterious Death. Man’s Body found in Field. On the Victim’s Breast was pinned a piece of paper bearing the words--‘Spies and Informers beware. By Order. I.R.A.’” CHAPTER XXV THE EVE OF PEACE The concussion of the bomb nearly threw me off my feet. For a few moments I thought that I was hit. In a dream I could see people falling, and I realised that things were darting by me like fast and furious flies. The lorry had slackened speed, and the Auxiliaries were standing up shooting. A man prone on the ground a few yards away raised himself cautiously on his hands. Then I came to life. At the same moment a man in the gutter decided that the moment to retire had come. He scrambled to his feet and, crouching low, dashed past me round the corner. Others ran with him wildly. The fire became concentrated on the corner of the wall. I stepped in a panic into shelter, picking up a child as I stepped. Women fell over perambulators after me, nurses abandoned babies and snatched them up again, children were flung from side to side and were pushed into shelter by people who wanted shelter for themselves. The child I held was about three. Its face had grown a dull red, and it caught its breath until I thought it would burst. The only thing to do was to smack it. That took its attention off other things, and it howled and breathed quite naturally. There was no longer an ambusher to be seen. “What a life!” I exclaimed to a woman beside me. “Terrible,” she declared indignantly. “I declare this is the third ambush I’ve wheeled my baby into this week. I can show you a bullet hole through her pram top this very minute. People ought to be ashamed throwing bombs in a crowd.” “Indeed, the Shinners are only doing their duty,” broke in a girl. “Why do the Black-and-Tans shoot back? It’s only babies they hit.” “And aren’t the Black-and-Tans doing their duty, too?” retorted the woman with the baby, who was thoroughly roused. “Indeed, and the Shinners are taking no risks, they are not. Did ye ever see a Shinner yet that came out in the open? Did ye ever see the Shinner that----” I walked home, leaving behind me a heated argument, and feeling rubbed up the wrong way. I decided I was quite glad to be joining Himself in the North in a day or two. Mrs. O’Grady met me at the door. “It’s yourself that’s all right? I was after saying a rosary for you this very minute. God save us! It’s the worst we’ve had yet. I thought the house would come down.” “I was right in the middle of it. I made sure I was hit at first. In fact my head is still ringing.” “And so it would,” Mrs. O’Grady agreed. “O’Grady is the very same. Miss O’Farrell is still out, and the mistress is in a fuss over it to be sure.”