After disarming these men Blake took their boat in tow, and this time succeeded in reaching Mr Briggs’ island safely, where he was astonished to meet the prisoners on the quay, and more especially the D.I., who had been missing for some time, and of whom all hope had been given up. The whole party then set off for the mainland, found that the guard had successfully beaten off an attack on the cars, and eventually all returned safely to Ballybor with only two constables slightly wounded. Two days afterwards Mr Briggs embarked on the s.s. _Cockatoo_, bound for England, where he will probably remain until the war in Ireland is over. IX. THE REWARD OF LOYALTY. For some time after the death of Anthony Mayne, the murdered R.M., Petty Sessions Courts ceased to be held in Ballybor, and the Sinn Fein Courts reigned supreme. At length Mayne’s successor arrived, and endeavoured to start the Courts in his district again, but found that not only were the country people too terrorised to bring any cases before a British Court, but that most of the magistrates had resigned, and none of the few remaining ones would face the bench. However, Fitzmaurice, the new R.M., stuck to it, and in the end a retired officer, living just outside Ballybor, became a magistrate for the county; and suddenly, to the intense excitement of the whole town, it was given out that some countryman had had the audacity to defy the edict of Dail Eireann, and to summon a neighbour to appear before the British magistrates. The court-house at Ballybor is a most curious-looking edifice of an unknown style of architecture, shabby and dismal outside and like a vault inside. On the day that the Court reopened the place was packed to the doors, and when the clerk stood up to announce the Court open, and ending with the words, “God save the King!” the silence could be felt. It was what is known in the west of Ireland as a “saft day”—a day of heavy drizzling rain and a mild west wind off the Atlantic, and after a time the crowded court-house of countrymen in soaked home-spuns and women with reeking shawls over their heads literally began to steam, and the strong acrid smell of turf smoke from the drying clothes became overpowering. At first all eyes were fixed on the two magistrates sitting on the raised dais at one end of the court-house, and many, remembering poor Mayne’s end, wondered how long the two had to live. The R.M., they knew, was well paid by the British Government, but the second magistrate’s unpaid loyalty must surely be a form of madness, or most likely he received secret pay from the Government.