At one period it looked as though Sinn Fein and the Transport Union would come to loggerheads; but Sinn Fein proved too strong, and the two became partners to all intents and purposes. A few days after he had returned from his fruitless visit to Blake, Carew received a letter from the secretary of the local branch of the Transport Union calling upon him to dismiss Coleman, and that if he did not comply at once the Union would call out all his men. Carew ignored the letter and the threat. The Owenmore river runs through Rossbane, roughly dividing it into two equal parts, and after a fortnight Carew received a letter from the I.R.A. calling upon him to attend a Sinn Fein Court the following Sunday night at Cloonalla Chapel, and saying that the part of his demesne separated from the house by the river was to be taken from him, and if he wished to claim “compensation” he must attend the “Court.” And again Carew ignored the letter. A week afterwards all his farm hands and servants, with the exception of the cook, Katey Brogan, simply vanished, and Carew found himself with only Katey and Coleman to keep going a large house and a four-hundred-acre farm. Nothing daunted, he took the Colemans into the house, made Mrs Coleman cook and Katey housemaid, whilst Coleman and he determined to carry on with the farming as best they could. A few days after a little girl brought a message that Katey’s father was very ill, and that her mother wished her to go home at once; so Katey left immediately, and the following day Carew rode over to see if he could help the Brogans, knowing that they were miserably poor. The Brogans lived in a two-roomed hovel on the verge of a bog, and on entering a terrible sight met Carew’s eyes. The old man lay dead in one bed, Katey dead in the second bed with a large bullet-hole through her forehead, and the old mother crooning over the fire ashes, stark mad. He then tried to find out what had happened from two neighbouring cottages, but in each case the door was slammed in his face with a curse of fear. After wandering about for over an hour he met a small boy, who told him the details of the worst murder the country had yet seen. It appeared that Katey must have written to the police in Ballybor with reference to the treatment of the Colemans, and that the letter had fallen into the hands of Sinn Fein agents in the post office. Using old Brogan’s illness to decoy Katey home, the murderers waited until midnight, when they knocked at the door. At the time Katey was sitting by the fire making broth for her father, and at once opened the door, to be confronted by eight armed men wearing white masks and black hats, one of whom said, “Come with us.” Apparently Katey refused, whereupon they seized her, bound her wrists, and dragged her screaming and struggling to a field some hundred yards from her home.