For a moment Blake was quite nonplussed—he had been so sure that the body would be Drake’s. He was certain that the station-master had spoken the truth, and there seemed no reason to doubt Moran’s evidence, though why he should be in such a state of terror was not plain. Further, it was now five days since Drake was supposed to have been murdered, and the body they had just dug up had obviously been in the ground two days at the most, probably only one. A careful examination of the cemetery showed that there was no other recent grave. Blake’s thoughts were interrupted by one of the Volunteers, a man called Brogan, asking with his tongue in his cheek and an impudent sneer: “Is yer honour satisfied now, and will we be after burying this poor fellow decently agin?” Taking no notice of Brogan’s question, Blake told a sergeant to make the Volunteers carry the dead man to the Crossleys, and to wait for him there. After they had gone he made Moran go down on his knees and swear on his oath that the body they had dug up was the man who had been executed on the previous Monday; but Moran could only swear that he had been so frightened at the time that he had not taken any notice of the prisoner, but that to the best of his belief the body was the one he had buried. Moran then broke down, and had to be half-carried, half-led to his cottage, where they left him, and returned to Ballybor with the Volunteers and the corpse for a military investigation. The failure to find Drake’s body in the bog cemetery forced Blake to follow up the other rumours regarding his sudden disappearance, but every rumour and clue failed them, and it looked as though Drake’s fate was to be added to the long list of unsolved Irish crimes. Two days after the police had visited the cemetery, Blake received information that arms for a police ambush had been brought into Murrisk townland, and also that poteen was being freely made and drunk there. Having arranged with a company of Auxiliaries stationed in Annagh to co-operate with him, Blake left the barracks with two Crossley loads of police and a Ford an hour before dawn one morning, and as the day broke the Auxiliaries and police started to close in a cordon on the village and outlying farms where they suspected the arms were hidden. The first signs of life were two women running across a bog, and when followed one of them was seen by Blake with his glasses to throw a still into a bog-hole, while the other one took two large jars from under her shawl and smashed them together into pieces. The women were quickly rounded up, and on being taken to the nearest house, the police found six fully-dressed men well tucked up in two beds, and the remains of a huge fire in the kitchen, while the whole house reeked of poteen—good circumstantial evidence that the party of eight had spent the night running a still.