September wore out; October wore out; November arrived. The long, unkind evenings of those months seemed a forcing ground for the terror, which was going about like a disease that one person after another catches. The private citizen, who asked only for peace, seemed to pass to and fro looking neither to right nor left, as if he feared above anything else to stir the curiosity of some partisan of the British Government or of Sinn Fein. Some evening walks I took through the chilly streets, seeing the lights and the shining mud, hearing the clamour of the paper boys shouting of other policemen shot, of other homes gone up in flames, have fixed those days for ever in my mind. And still the shaking, groaning lorries, crammed with troops, rumbled round the corners, and still the lighter flying police cars fled up one street and down another. In alleyway and shadowy doorway stood waiting figures to be seen by him with eyes--pickets posted to give the alarm to the meeting not far away; and in the bars and the coffee-houses the man with eyes saw the messages passed, and might occasionally hear passwords exchanged. My French barber says one day, as his razor wanders round my Adam’s apple, “I go. Zees country is no good to me.” “What’s up?” I ask, speaking like a ventriloquist. “I go out zees morning. I go by Merrion Square, and a young man come up to me and look into my face, and he say, ‘Life is sweet.’ ‘It ees,’ I sez, and turn round and come back home. He have mistook me for some one else. I take no more reesks. I stay here with ze door locked until I can sell ze beesness.” An acquaintance of mine is rung up on the telephone. “Who’s there?” he asks. “Irish Republican Army Headquarters speaking. You have been observed going about with Captain Jones. This acquaintance must cease.” “Captain Jones is----” “The conversation is closed.” Captain Jones wonders why he has lost a friend. Some one else receives with his breakfast egg the following warning. “You are ordered by the Republican Authorities to leave the country within thirty-six hours. If this order is not complied with, you will be suitably dealt with. By Order.--I.R.A.” But threat and intimidation were not the privilege of one faction. The following reminder was received by a number of the members of Dail Eireann, the Republican Parliament, which met when it could in secret session-- “An eye for an eye, A tooth for a tooth, Therefore a life for a life.” The worthy burghers of Drogheda were startled one morning by the following poster-- “Drogheda, Beware!