As soon as I got into the street I felt better. The moving people gave me confidence, although all through the city there was a feeling of fear such as I cannot describe. Rumours of the Croke Park affair, where a dozen people had been shot by the police at a football match, were being whispered abroad; but nobody seemed to know much. We remembered the dead man in the lorry. The fire was burning out. We saw it now and then through the openings of the streets; but we never got as far as it. It had long been dark, and I soon found the night was getting colder and colder. Presently I began to think a fire at home would be less dismal than this tramping about in the dark. After half an hour everybody seemed to have gone indoors, and there was danger of being curfewed if a sudden change was made in the time. We went back. When we were indoors again shooting began all through the city. Patrols were probably firing more blank cartridge to clear the streets. Down the roads tramped soldiers in tin hats, and armoured cars rolled by. We put out the light and leaned from the window watching. Now and then some passing officer, fearful of a bomb, would shout, “Keep your heads in.” In the middle of it all Mrs. Slaney hustled into the room, giving us no time to answer her knock. “I have just been talking to a leading Sinn Feiner,” she announced, “and those men who were shot this morning were all spies. I told you that our boys must have had something definite against them.” “I don’t think it makes it a bit better,” I declared. “A life is a life, and it’s frightful to sneak into a man’s bedroom while he’s asleep, and kill him in front of his wife.” “It’s disgusting,” exclaimed Mrs. Slaney, “to think that English officers and gentlemen will descend to such things. Monstrous! Before the war such a thing was never heard of.” “I think it a pity the Sinn Feiners murdered them.” I stuck to my guns stoutly. Mrs. Slaney borrowed the paper and departed. “Her Sinn Feiners are all spies too,” I said, as soon as she had gone. “What’s she talking about?” Himself nodded. “In any case I take off my hat to spies, Sinn Feiners or British. They have to be brave men. I should think a spy wants all the qualities of a soldier, and many more besides.” That was all I got out of him. We went to bed soon after, but not to sleep, at least I did not. Desultory shooting and bombing went on all night. After “Bloody Sunday” as it came to be called, the world drew a horrified breath over the men who were shot in bed. “Poor So-and-so shot asleep. Frightful!” What of his wife who was not shot, but who lost her reason three days after, and three weeks after lost her life and her baby’s life; his wife, who for the rest of her brief life saw men filing into the room, heard the sound of shooting, heard the raiders laugh, saw them wash their hands after the killing?