I nodded to show I was grateful for the favour, and O’Grady and I explored these biscuits. I wondered if O’Grady had ever been in as bad straits before. I had had to put up with all sorts of beds in my life, beds on the bare earth, beds on the rolling sea, most bitter barren beds; but they had not taught me to be friendly to the colour of these blankets. However, O’Grady seemed to find what he wanted, took off his boots, put his hard hat on top of them, rolled up just as he had been standing, and was asleep before I had made a first choice. Before long the men nodding by the fire came across. “The old un’s got down to it quickly,” one of them said with admiration. “The old dog for the hard road.” “You can doss by the fire there,” the other one said to me, jerking his hand to a place by the side of the fire. I took him at his word and emigrated with two blankets which seemed to have known fewer generations of Sinn Feiners than any of the others. I grew more friendly with them as gradually I became warm and sleepy. But I never quite fell asleep, and though it was late when I lay down, what remained of the night was ages long. It was a very restless place. People came in and out, cheery people, people in evening dress who had dined well, people in uniform who seemed to have nothing to do and no desire for bed. Now one Auxiliary arose out of his bath like Lazarus come out of his tomb; now a second sprang up like a jack-in-the-box and the first sank back again. All the while the strenuous Auxiliary continued to write, and to this day I believe he was at work upon his reminiscences. Finally, an Auxiliary, who had arisen from his bath and not gone back again, started an argument with the strenuous Auxiliary about who burned Cork. He was serious and anxious to get at the truth. They produced paper and worked at the answer with a will. The Auxiliary from the bath proved there were only a small number of his fraternity in Cork at the time, and that most of them, including himself, were in hospital having pieces of bomb taken out of them. He said there were over four thousand soldiers in Cork, and God knew how many Shinners, and it was either the military or the I.R.A.; but the Auxiliaries were blameless. This argument lasted a very long time, and caused books to be tossed about, and feet to be shuffled, and other things to happen unconducive to sleep, and it must have worn out the Auxiliary from the bath, for at the end of it he sank into his bath again like a corpse sinking into a grave. The strenuous Auxiliary returned to his writing. The Auxiliaries who lived in the baths were thin Auxiliaries; there was a stout Auxiliary dozing on a chair on the farther side of the fire. He was middle-aged, and had something of the look of a father of a family; but there was never a moment when he was not picturesque, with his rifle at his hand and his Balmoral bonnet on his head.