“Instead of that,” said Sam, “Dopping stood up straight, and saluted O’Connell. O’Connell stiffened his back, and saluted Dopping. The third man, the one I didn’t know, stood up, too, and saluted. O’Connell saluted him. Then the governor bowed quite civilly, and O’Connell saluted him. I can tell you it was a pretty scene. ‘I beg to inform you, gentlemen,’ said O’Connell, ‘that a consignment of rifles and ammunition, apparently intended for your force, has arrived at our headquarters in a motor lorry.’ Nothing could have been civiller than the way he spoke. But Dopping was not to be beat. He’s a bristly old bear at times, but he always was a gentleman. ‘Owing to a mistake,’ he said, ‘some arms, evidently belonging to you, are now in a car at our door.’ The governor and the other man sat down and laughed till they were purple, but neither O’Connell nor old Dopping so much as smiled. It was then--and I give you my word not till then--that I tumbled to the idea that I’d been running guns for the other side. I expected that there’d be a furious row the minute the governor stopped laughing. But there wasn’t. In fact, no one took any notice of me. There was a long consultation, and in the end they settled that it might be risky to start moving the guns about again, and that each party had better stick to what it had got. Our fellows--I call them our fellows, though, of course, I was really acting for the others--our fellows got rather the better of the exchange in the way of ammunition. But O’Connell scooped in a lot of extra rifles. When they had that settled they all saluted again, and the governor said something about hoping to meet O’Connell at Philippi. I don’t know what he meant by that, but O’Connell seemed tremendously pleased. Where do you suppose Philippi is?” “Philippi,” I said, “is where somebody--Julius Caesar, I think, but it doesn’t matter---- What your father meant was that he hoped to have a chance of fighting it out with O’Connell some day. Not a duel, you know, but a proper battle. The Ulster Volunteers against the other lot.” “We shall have to wipe out the police first,” said Sam, “to prevent their interfering. I hope I shall be there then. I want to get my own back out of those fellows who collared me from behind the day of the last rag. But, I say, what about the soldiers--the regular soldiers, I mean? Which side will they be on?” “That,” I said, “is the one uncertain factor in the problem. Nobody knows.” “The best plan,” said Sam, “would be to take them away altogether, and leave us to settle the matter ourselves. We’d do it all right, judging by the way old Dopping and O’Connell behaved to each other.” Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. I should never have suspected Sam of profound political wisdom. But it is quite possible that his suggestion would meet the case better than any other. X ~~ IRELAND FOR EVER I