The door opened, and the Auxiliaries came filing out. Never a word was said. They climbed into the lorries, and we began to tear round the corners at the previous breakneck speed. Soon we were racing past Trinity and the Bank of Ireland. In the middle of College Green an armoured car was at work with a searchlight, turning the beam slowly across the face of Trinity, lighting up the windows one after another. Not a fly could have crawled unnoticed upon that surface. We took no notice of them, nor they of us. For a minute we were racing along Dame Street, and then with a sweep we were turning in to the Castle Gate, the great doors were pulled apart, and we were at a standstill within the Castle Yard. CHAPTER XXI INSIDE THE CASTLE In a few seconds the lorries were empty and everybody was disappearing into the dark. A voice had cried out, “Come along, boys, the bar’s open for another half-hour.” Not everybody succumbed to the magic of those words, for O’Grady and I were led away to the left to a place which must have been a guardroom. The spell of the army was upon everything. There were endless unbrushed passages as a start, and everybody we came upon seemed to come to life suddenly, and to wave us on to somebody else. In the guardroom we were delivered over to new people. The room was of no special size, shape or description, and had only one attraction, which was a fire. The windows were sandbagged. There was a table at which a strenuous Auxiliary sat writing; two other Auxiliaries nodded over the fire; and to one side of the room were three baths, and in each bath slumbered an Auxiliary. On some biscuits, not the edible kind, on the floor slept two young prisoners. The strenuous Auxiliary reluctantly put down his pen. The two men nodding at the fire watched out of an eye each. As a start we were prodded all over for arms and seditious documents, and I was told to give up my pocket-book. “Any money in it?” demanded the strenuous Auxiliary, as I was passing it over. “Thirty bob, I think,” I answered. “Well, count it and see,” he ordered, “or you’ll say we pinched it.” I counted it and handed him the pocket-book, which he went through page by page, asking me to explain every likely-looking sentence. Finally he slapped it back at me on the table. He waved a hand at some dirty biscuits and dirtier blankets, which were stacked in a corner. “You can take some of those,” he said, “and doss on the floor.”