“This is thrilling!” I exclaimed. At every window was a head, at most two, in some there were half a dozen heads, and the crowd, which had fallen back before the troops, drifted as near as it dared. The capture of the bridge and the bank of the canal was the matter of moments, and then there was an armistice while two officers, displaying many ribbons, discussed the next stage of the attack. “Certain to be mined,” I heard one declare. “What would be the sense of the Shinners putting a thing like that there if it wasn’t?” “There may be a dead body attached. Some poor devil gone west,” answered the other. He scratched his head. “Let’s put a shot into it to make sure.” “Blow the bally canal to bits, what?” declared the first man, gaily. Then he became depressed. “There must be a catch in it,” declared the second man. “Some one’ll have to go out and see to it. Where the devil’s a boat?” “There’s a boat the other side,” said a policeman, heavily. “Bring her across, what!” cried the officer. The policeman suddenly lost all joy in the day; but he got the boat. He gave it over to the officers, who clambered in. Some girls giggled. The senior of the officers reached out his hand and carefully drew the oil drum towards him. He fell upon the notice and destroyed it, and captured the Sinn Fein flag. “Empty!” he said, as he cleared the drum from its moorings and they lifted it into the boat. “It’ll be full next time,” I couldn’t help saying. Everybody looked at me with one accord as if I had done it. I started to depart, and the good example set the soldiers scrambling into the lorry, the policemen stalking off on their beat, and the crowd drifting on its way. Such adventures as this might be met with at any street corner. Himself speaks. Everywhere there were signs of the times. All day long the military lorries rumbled about the city--great brutal concerns crowded with armed soldiers in tin hats, so that they looked like mouths bristling with teeth. And faster than they rolled the armoured cars like little forts on wheels. And faster still and more furious, lighter lorries choked with Auxiliary police and Black-and-Tans. At any hour of the day one might walk on top of a raid, though night was the more chosen time for such things. There was generally a small crowd of errand boys, beggars, and telegraph boys, and other people with nothing important on hand, kept at rifle’s length by a line of Tommies drawn across the streets; and a hundred yards beyond was the fatal house with lorries like empty mouths before it--the teeth having got out and gone inside. These raids had a fascination for the passerby, although, nine cases out of ten, nothing was to be seen, and the tenth time there was a chance of being shot, as some one would try and escape, or something would happen inside the house.