Luckily Maria did not attempt to leave the house, and ten seconds after the back door had closed, six revolver shots rang out in quick succession, followed by the sound of a heavy body falling on wet ground. After telling Maria and her mother to go to their bedroom, Blake took Hegarty and his son into the back-yard, and showed them the body of the unfortunate Volunteer officer thrown by the police on the manure-heap. During the next half-hour he had little difficulty in getting all the information he required about local Volunteers (he made no mention of the arms), and after warning them not to move the corpse, the police left the house. Maria appears to have been greatly taken with Jones’s youthful beauty, and nearly ruined the whole show again by insisting on her father and brother going out to bring in the corpse and lay it out in the kitchen. Luckily the Hegartys were too much afraid, and Jones told Blake afterwards that the agony of lying with his face buried in liquid manure was nothing to the agony he suffered listening to the Hegartys arguing whether his corpse should be left lying on the manure-heap to be eaten by dogs, or brought into the kitchen and laid out as a “dacent son of ould Ireland” should be. While this argument was still raging a car stopped at the front door, and again the police rushed into the house, out at the back door, dragged the corpse off the manure-heap, through the house, and flung it on top of the real Volunteer officer in the back of the car. After telling the Hegartys that they would throw the body into the lake, the police drove off at a furious rate in the direction of Ballybor. On returning to barracks, Jones at once rushed off to have a hot bath, while Blake went to his office to find his two clerks snowed up with paper, correspondence which had arrived by the goods mail while they had been out. After they had some food, Jones was all for raiding the rector of Cloonalla at once; but Blake made the fatal mistake of attending to the correspondence then, and putting off the raid to the following night. The next night they set out with a strong force of police for the Cloonalla Rectory, but found, though there were evident signs that their information had been correct, that the arms had been removed; the rector was most indignant, and they returned defeated. A few nights afterwards, when at dinner, Blake showed Jones the following paragraph in an Irish paper. “A BRUTAL MURDER. “On the night of the 3rd inst., about midnight, armed men in uniform, some of them wearing trenchcoats, raided the house of Mr Patrick Hegarty, a respectable farmer, who has never been known to take any active part in politics. Inside these men found a young man alleged to have been wearing the uniform of an officer in the I.R.A.