Presently the woman in the shop, having sold her eggs and bought provisions, wrapped her shawl over her head and started to make her way home. As Paddy moved aside to let the woman out, his ear caught the dreaded sound he was expecting, growing louder every second, and culminating in a shower-bath of mud as two Crossley tenders, full of Auxiliary Cadets, dashed past the shop and disappeared as suddenly as they had come. Hardly had the noise of the engines died away than Paddy’s quick ear caught the sound of cars approaching again, and two Ford cars—the first carrying a huge coffin and the second apparently mourners—drew up at the small hotel almost opposite Paddy’s shop. Some two years previously Flanagan had become a rabid Sinn Feiner—he had previously been as rabid a Nationalist—with a keen eye to business. For a long time it looked as though Sinn Fein was the only horse in the race, and the dream of an Irish Republic seemed more than likely to become a reality; lately, however, the British Government had been sitting up and taking a quite unnecessary interest in Ireland. First, the British Government had formed the Auxiliary Division—“those cursed pups of Cromwell,” as Paddy described them to his friends, while Mrs Paddy used to say that the Government had recruited them from all the prisons and asylums in England; then, to crown all, the Government had had the audacity to put several counties within easy reach of Ballyfrack under martial law. So far Paddy had carried on the war for freedom with words only, but a week before this story starts he had found to his great alarm that he would be called upon for deeds. On a dark Sunday night, just as the Flanagans were preparing to go to bed, there came two short sharp knocks at the shop door, followed by a long one. Now Paddy had always had a great dread of night work, and swore that come what might he would not open his door to any man, be he policeman or Sinn Feiner: for a minute there was a tense silence in the stuffy dark shop, save for the heavy breathing of Mrs Flanagan, broken suddenly by a blow which threatened to break in the street door, and a loud voice called out to Flanagan to open in the name of the Irish Republican Army. “God save us,” said Mrs Flanagan, and dived under the bed; and Paddy would have liked to follow his wife, but he had heard of the unpleasant results which always followed a refusal to open to the I.R.A. Before another blow could be struck on the door he had it open, and at once three dark figures slipped into the shop, the last one closing the door. And in the darkness of the shop Paddy Flanagan listened to his fate: it seemed that in the adjoining county, where martial law had recently been proclaimed, the military were making life quite unbearable for the Volunteers, and the Auxiliaries had openly declared that they would shoot John O’Hara—the chief assassin of policemen in that county—at sight.