All the time Sean Treacy tried to keep our spirits from drooping. Several times we asked him how far more was it to Cahir, and always got the reply, “the next turn of the road.” He was right, of course; but as the road and the railway which runs parallel to it are an almost perfect straight line for three miles, the next turn was a long way off. Now and again we were so exhausted that we used to stand and rest our heads against the ditch by the railway side to take a sleep—or what we persuaded ourselves was a sleep—for five minutes. At last we reached Cahir. We were now as near to absolute collapse as men could be. We were becoming desperate. For the first time we had to assume that outward coolness, and take that risk which later became almost part of our daily routine. We walked right through the town of Cahir, a garrison town on the main road from Limerick to Clonmel and Waterford, and only fifteen miles from Soloheadbeg. But we had to take the risk. Our blood was almost congealed with cold, we were ravenously hungry, and there was little life left in us. But we knew one good friend on whom we could rely for a night’s shelter. That friend was Mrs. Tobin, of Tincurry House, near Cahir. I shall never forget her kindness to us that night and to others of the boys later. The British afterwards bombed and destroyed the house in daylight as an “official reprisal” for the shooting of District-Inspector Potter, an incident to which I shall refer in a later chapter. We got to bed the first time for a week. The three of us were in the same plight. Excitement, cold and exhaustion all combined to make sleep impossible for us. But we lay limp for four hours, and in this way we got some rest for our weary limbs. We got up full of anxiety to hear the news. Since we left Soloheadbeg we had spoken to nobody and had not seen a newspaper. Sure enough, there were the big splash headings, just as we anticipated, announcing this “Tipperary Outrage,” “Fearful Crime,” “Murder of Two Policemen,” and such like. We saw, too, an account of the inquest on the dead men, Constable McDonnell and O’Connell. Most of the news of the incident was absolutely wrong, as it often was later on. We learned, too, that two young men had been arrested on suspicion, but neither had anything to do with the affair, and they were released in a few days. Two schoolboys from the locality, Matthew Hogan, aged fifteen, a brother of Sean’s; and Timothy Connors, aged eleven, were also arrested by the British, as they were supposed to have seen us. The father of the boy Connors had been a workman employed on the farm of Sean Treacy’s mother. Both boys were detained for months in an effort to get them to give information, and, in the case of Connors, a great legal action ensued, which resulted in a verdict against the Commandant of the R.I.C. Headquarters for illegal detention. [Illustration: POLICE NOTICE. £1000 REWARD WANTED FOR MURDER IN IRELAND. DANIEL BREEN