On a fine winter’s morning Blake set out from the barracks at Ballybor in the Crossley tender with an escort of six police, the most he dared take with him for fear of weakening the Ballybor garrison. It was market-day in the little town, and all along the road to Grouse Lodge they met the country people coming in—some in horse-carts, others in ass-carts, and the poorer ones on foot—but not one of them would speak to or even look at the police, the people on foot even getting off the road into the fields directly they caught sight of the police-car approaching. On learning from one of the constables that Mulligan’s house was not on the main road to Grouse Lodge Barracks, but on a byroad, Blake ordered the driver to go by this road, and when he came to Mulligan’s house to stop the car and pretend that something required adjusting in his engine. After a time the driver stopped outside an ordinary thatched cottage on the side of the road, and, as Blake had expected, the inhabitants came to the door to see who it was. The first to appear was a young man, and as the constable whispered to Blake that he was Patsey Mulligan, Blake nearly shouted for joy, for he saw that the man was none other than “Murphy,” his former servant in France, and a deserter from his Majesty’s Army in the field! At once, before Patsey could get a good look at him and possibly recognise him, Blake ordered the driver to go on to the barracks as fast as the bad road would allow them. The question now was how to get hold of Mulligan alone, and this was settled by the information which a constable at Grouse Lodge was able to give. It appeared that this plucky constable had for some time past been in the habit of slipping out of the barracks by the back entrance at night in plain clothes and returning before daybreak. He had discovered that Mulligan was in the habit of meeting a girl nearly every night at a certain lonely spot about a mile from his house; and from overhearing their conversation, had found out that Patsey wanted to marry this girl, but that she had refused to marry him until he had enough money to take her out of the country and to buy a small farm in America. On questioning this constable, Blake was able to get a detailed account of Mulligan’s movements since the time of his desertion. It appeared that for a considerable time after he came back he hardly left his home at all, contenting himself by working on his father’s farm, and it was not until the Sinn Fein Volunteers were started in the district and Mulligan was elected captain that he appeared in public. About the same time there was a report in the neighbourhood that Patsey Mulligan was courting a girl called Bridgie O’Hara, who lived in the Cloonalla district; also that another man in the same townland with money was doing his best to make her marry him.