On the very day after the parade of insurrectionaries in Belfast a famous Irishman, soldier, sailor, statesman, man of letters, who in his young manhood had served throughout the long-drawn South African War the Empire which had refused liberty to his country alone of all her Colonies, and in the days to come, though now in his graying years, was to be the hero of one of the most desperate ventures of the Great War, ran the little _Asgarde_, her womb heavy with strange fruit, into Howth Harbour while the Sunday bells peeled across the quiet waters, calling to church. The arms were landed and marched under Nationalist escort towards Dublin. The police and a company of King's Own Scottish Borderers met the party and blocked the way. After a parley the Nationalists dispersed and the soldiers marched back to Dublin through a hostile demonstration. Mobbed, pelted, provoked to the last degree, at Bachelor's Walk, on the quay, where owing to the threatening attitude of the crowd they had been halted, the men took the law into their own hands and fired without the order of their officer. Three people were killed. The incident led to the first quarrel that had taken place between Ernie and Joe Burt in a friendship now of some years standing. "Massacre by the military," said Joe. "That's what it is." The old soldier in Ernie leapt to the alert. "Well, what would you have had em do?" he cried hotly. "Lay down and let emselves be kicked to death?" "If the soldiers want to shoot at all let em shoot the armed rebels," retorted Joe. "Let em shoot the lot, I says," answered Ernie. "I'm sick of it. Ireland! Ireland! Ireland all the time. No one's no time to think of poor old England. Yet we've our troubles too, I reck'n." Joe went out surlily without saying good-night. When he was gone, Ruth who had been listening, looked up at Ernie, a faint glow of amusement, interest, surprise, in her eyes. "First time ever I knaw'd you and Joe get acrarst each other," she said. Ernie, biting home on his pipe, did not meet her gaze. "First," he said. "Not the last, may be." She put down dish-cloth and dish, came to him, and put her hand on his shoulder. "Let me look at you, Ern!" His jaw was set, almost formidable: he did not speak. "Kiss me, Ern," she said. For a moment his eyes hovered on her face. "D'you mean anything?" he asked. "Not that," she answered and dropped her hand. "Then to hell with you!" he cried with a kind of desperate savagery and thrust her brutally away. "Sporting with a man!" He put on his cap and went out. In a few minutes he was back. Paying no heed to her, he sat down at the kitchen-table and wrote a note, which he put on the mantel-piece. "You can give this to Alf next time he comes round for the rent," he said. "What is it?" asked Ruth. "Notice," Ern answered. "We're going to shift to the Colonel's garage." Ruth gave battle instantly. "Who are?" she cried, facing him. He met her like a hedge of bayonets.