Without a second thought we faced for Ballagh. Soon we were in the thick of the night’s fun. It felt glorious to be back again, even for one night, in the atmosphere of light-hearted gaiety. For nearly two years I had not mingled with a crowd, and here I was now in the midst of a typical Tipperary party. The music was great, and the supper and refreshments were even better. For once we forgot the dark clouds over us; we laughed and talked and danced in the reels and in the sets with the lads and the lassies—in the middle of the Martial Law area, and at a time when probably a dozen British raiding parties were breaking in doors in cottages and farmhouses looking for us. Of course, the boys and girls all knew us. They, like so many others before and after, had only to slip out, any one of them, go to the nearest police barracks, not two miles away, and earn a thousand pounds by saying where we were. But they never dreamed of such a thing. Neither did we ever dream of suspecting any one in the party, or in any other party of Irish-Irelanders. Every one of them would cut off his hand before he would touch that Saxon gold. Irishmen have many faults, but very, very few informers are bred amongst them. We danced all through the night, and in the early hours of the morning I returned with a few of the boys to Rossmore. The other three did not come with me; they stayed on for a few more dances, but we had arranged to meet at O’Keeffe’s, of Glenough, where we would have a right good sleep. Shortly after I arrived there Sean Treacy and Seamus Robinson put in an appearance. Sean Hogan did not come with them, but none of us felt a bit uneasy. He had two days to go before he reached his eighteenth birthday, but we knew he was well able to look after himself. The three of us were about as tired as we could be. What with our five nights without sleep, and the fatigue of a night’s dancing, we could have slept, as Sean said, on a bed of briars. The sight of the cosy bed that had been made ready for us almost made us sleep before we turned into it. I think Sean Treacy had not finished his rosary before I fell asleep. The next sound I heard was the voice of Patrick Kinnane. It seemed very far off. He was speaking to me I knew, but my eyes refused to open. Then I was brought to my senses. His words lifted me clean out of the bed; I realised the full meaning of his early intrusion: Hogan had been captured by the Peelers! It would have been very easy for us to believe that “J.J.,” as we called him—his name was John Joseph—had been shot. But to think he was arrested! I would not believe it. Was Kinnane joking? I turned to Sean Treacy, for he too was on his feet by now, and I read the truth in his face.