In all former rebellions in Ireland the Government have found that to get information it was only necessary to pay money. Sometimes it did not cost much, other times they had to pay generously, but always money produced information; and at the beginning of the Sinn Fein trouble the Government naturally assumed that money would produce the informers as before. But this time they were wrong, and it was only—when the Government were at their wits’ end—by a lucky chance of finding important papers on a man, who was shot at night during a military raid on a Dublin hotel, that at last they received the information which enabled them to grapple successfully with Sinn Fein. There is no doubt that the originators of Sinn Fein had read their country’s history carefully, and were determined that this time there should be no informers; and to this end they organised a “Reign of Terror” throughout Ireland such as few countries have ever seen at any time in history. Their chief obstacle was the R.I.C., and once this force was reduced to a state of inactivity—they thought they had broken it for good and all—their task appeared comparatively easy. Every man, woman, and child in the south and west of Ireland knew that if they gave any information to the police they would be shot, and shot they were. When Blake took over his duties at Ballybor, he found that the police had no source of information whatsoever, with the result that each attack on a barrack and every ambush of a patrol came as a surprise to them. So great was the “Reign of Terror” in the Ballybor district that no person dare speak to a policeman, and the shopkeepers were afraid to serve one, even with the necessities of life. Blake quickly realised that if he was ever to get the upper hand in his district, he must discover some source of getting information, and find it quickly, before the whole population were driven to join forces against him. One of Sinn Fein’s principles has been that the fewer who know the fewer can tell, and, as a rule, there has only been one man in a district—usually the local captain of the Volunteers—who has information of coming events; and Blake knew that his only chance of reliable news lay with this man, and with him alone. About the only information which his men could give him of his area was that a young man, who lived in the townland of Cloonalla, named Patsey Mulligan, was the captain of the local Volunteers, and that his house was close to the barracks at Grouse Lodge; so he determined to go out to Grouse Lodge Barracks and stay there until he had either come to terms with Patsey Mulligan, or saw that it was hopeless.