For a time there was silence again, but Jones could feel that the eyes of Maria Hegarty were on him all the time; and presently she began to ask most awkward questions about places and people in the States, and Jones was hard put to it to avoid suspicion. Luckily Maria mentioned that her friends lived in the Eastern States, so that it was easy for Jones’s people to live far away in the west, and the situation was saved. Supper over, the women cleared the table and retired, while Hegarty produced a large jar of poteen and tumblers, and the three men settled themselves round the fire to drink and talk. For the next two hours Jones extracted all the information he could out of the Hegartys, who, though shy at first, warmed up after several glasses of poteen, and Jones learnt from young Hegarty that the arms were kept under the floors of a disused Protestant school-house in the rectory grounds at Cloonalla, the rector of which was a notorious Loyalist, and would have died sooner than conceal arms knowingly for the rebels. At this point Jones, who had never tasted poteen before, suddenly realised that he was nearly drunk, and that before he became quite drunk it would be wiser to lie down on a bed. On inquiry, he found that he was to sleep with young Hegarty, the idea of which so staggered him that he felt soberer at once, and determined to try and hold out. Suddenly there came a violent knocking at the front door, followed by what sounded like the bang of a rifle-butt on the back door. At once the Hegartys put out the light, and started to hustle Jones up a ladder to a loft above the kitchen. But by now the poteen had quite got to Jones’s head; and when the police went into the kitchen, they found old Hegarty and his son still struggling to get an I.R.A. officer up the ladder. The Hegartys now let go of Jones, who promptly closed with Blake, and a tremendous struggle started in the kitchen. In a few minutes Jones was overcome, and lay on the floor with a heavy constable sitting on his chest. Blake then ordered the Hegartys to light the lamp, and afterwards to stand against the wall with their hands over their heads, and the constables to take Jones outside and shoot him. But he had not reckoned on Maria, who burst into the kitchen and with piercing screams endeavoured to throw her arms round Jones’s neck. Maria was a strong girl and desperate, and it took Jones and the two constables all they knew to shake her off and struggle out of the house.