when I heard you'd met an accident! Thank God you were not hurted, anyway." The smile left her face all at once. "Tell me," she asked in a loud whisper, "was he anointed?" Reply was impossible, for I was quite at sea. "Did you get Father Heaphy from Tubbernaphooka to him? Could you get ne'er a priest for him at all?" I had a glimpse, as it were, of land. I shook my head. "There was no need "I began; but before I could say more she grasped her thick grey hair with both hands and rushed out to Mr Fagan, who lurked, candle in hand, on the landing. "Oh, Jamesy," she cried, “the shaffer was killed dead!" It was no easy matter to convince the Fagans that Twehig was as much alive as much alive as I. From the first, apparently, they had put their ewn construction upon the account I gave them, and had taken for granted that we had been waylaid, and that Twehig was either lying wounded by the roadside er had er had been escorted away by the raiders. On learning that he was an ex-soldier, all possibility vanished of his life being spared, and the one remaining point of interest was whether he had been killed instantaneously or had survived long enough to see a priest. Even after I had gone over the whole episode again and again, enlarging apon every detail, I found they still thought I was trying to hide the truth with elaborate and circumstantial lies, lest I should somehow expose myself to the imputation of giving evidence against Sinn Fein! Yet the Fagans are most superior people, intelligent loyalists, and acquainted with "the ways of the gentry!" I did not sleep well that night. Below in the street the Clashagoppul Tin Band defied the New Year and the R.I.C. well into the small hours of the morning. The discordant strains were 80companied by squeals and catcalls, cheers for de Valera, and invitations to the police to "come out and be shot." Towards morning a variation in the noise was introduced by sharp whistles, words of command, and the measured tramping of Sinn Fein feet. I fell asleep eventually, and awoke to the sound of church bells. Mrs Fagan, dressed for early Mass, was standing by my bed. She asked anxiously if I had heard the "musio in the night, and assured me the poor fellows would have played louder only for a death in the village and they being very soft-hearted! I had told Twohig that should he not turn up with the ear by nine o'clock I would take steps to get back to the spot where I had left him. So, while the Fagans were at Mass I went across the road to the police station and telephoned to various garages and ear-owners in the neighbouring towns. But the reply was the same in every case either the drivers had refused to apply for permits, or the owners were afraid to take out their 39 cars. I wondered whether world-wide of that picture,' The matter being settled, I spent the morning in the Fagans' comfortable sittingroom. Daylight is a great reviver of courage, and I found that much of the caution displayed overnight by my hosts had melted away in the sunshine. Moreover, they had almost succeeded in believing I had told them the plain truth about my adventure! I was anxious to solve the mystery surrounding Cornelius. Mrs Fagan herself actually led up to the subject. ""Tis seeking the picture, you are?" she said. "Indeed, 'tis after leaving a great gap on the wall.” Now that my attention was drawn to it, something certainly was missing from the wall facing the window-a fact emphasised by the square of wall - paper showing its original unfaded colour. "Cornelius thought the I recalled the picture thena large and gaudily-coloured portrait of King George V. "It was a beautiful picture, "He did so," said Mr Fagan, He launched into a long desoription of the vicissitudes of Cornelius after he had been demobbed. With his wife and little boy he had intended settling permanently at Clashagoppul to help the old people with the farm and shop. He had counted on a 1 pleasant life of industrious and say they'd shoot him the freedom after the years of war and hardship. But Sinn Fein willed otherwise. Cornelius was subjected to a persistent and relentless persecution. It began with a kind of social boycott. Nobody spoke to him on his way to or from Mass. Nobody would have any dealings with him at local fairs. He was warned, anonymously, to keep away from the pony races. Then the men employed on the Fagans' farm left without notice at the busiest time of the harvest. The cattle kept breaking out mysteriously and straying into bogs and glens. A valuable young horse was found entangled in barbed wire on an adjacent farm. "Cornelius had great spirit in him always,' said Mr Fagan, "and he knew it was because he had been fighting agin the Germans in place of for them that the Sinn Fein had him persecuted. But it vexed him when his wife was in dread to go outside the house, and when his young son would be playing at shooting policemen and shouting, 'Up the rebels!'" "Where did you learn that at all?' says Cornelius. At school, sir,' says the little fellow, and Up Dablin! Down England! Up the Huns!' says he, proud-like of his learning. Cornelius was Cornelius was lepping mad, and he wouldn't let him go to school any more. And didn't they come after that and throw stones on the roof in the middle of the night same as they'd shoot a policeman. He thought to best them in the latther end, though his wife was crying all the time to go back to England. But it was the picture settled him. He was smoking his pipe one evening after giving the young horse a gallop. Two men came to the door on bicycles. 'Ye have a picture within in the house,' they says. "That's true maybe,' says Cornelius. 'Tis a picture of ould George the Englishman,' says they, and bedad! ye've got to take it down.' "Get out of that, quiok,' says Cornelius. "Well, they made off on their bioyoles, for he put the fear of God on them with the look he gave them. But didn't ten of them come with black masks and guns at one o'clock in the night, and they bet the backdoor in. Cornelius got a stick and went to the head of the stairs. 'We'll not allow a picture of the English King in the Irish Republic,' says they. 'Let ye take it down at once or we'll shoot it down,' and they up the stairs to the sittingroom. But Cornelius was in front of them in it, and had the picture whisked off the nail and into a cupboard in the wall, "''Tis down,' says he, quiet enough; 'I'd not give ye the satisfaction of firing at his Majesty, ye dirty cowardly tinkers,' says he. They left him then, but he was terrible angry, and did no more, but away with him and his wife and child to England. "I fought for the freedom of the world,' says he, and it's with Home Rule Bills and not the freedom of a dog I'd get in Ireland."" There was little one could say in comment on this tale. Mere words seemed inadequate, and it is a shameful fact that similar cases occur continually all over the country. Fagan poked the fire vigorously. "The Government will be driving the decent people to go Sinn Fein to save themselves," he said bitterly. "Wirra! what ails them at all that they can't govern? Is it the way they're afraid of Sinn Fein ?" "Well, they seem to be going to give us Home Rule now, and perhaps that will settle the country," I suggested. He laughed hoarsely. "Is it Home Rule to settle the country when divil a man in Ireland can keep a law, let alone make one?" he asked; "and it's not a republie that would settle the country either, no, nor twenty republics! Though for the matther of that, it's not twenty republies there'd be in Ireland within six months, but forty, and the whole lot of them persecuting each other and wanting England to help. 'Faith, it's the English would have their fill of hardship in the latther end!" he concluded with gloomy satisfaction. The sound of a moter-horn in the street told me the soldier and his car had arrived. "Look," said Mr Fagan as I rose to go, "what's wanted is for the English Government to govern. Not to be fooling Late that afternoon I passed through Clashagoppul on my way home, and stopped to say good-bye to the Fagans. The sun had set, and with the long hours of darkness before them their nerves were again in the ascendant. Mrs Fagan suggested I was ineurring needless danger in being driven by a soldier. Mr Fagan, with an uneasy laugh, referred to the political views he had expressed that morning as "all talk and thrash-same as you'd see on the newspapers." Both implered me to say nothing about Cornelius. "Herself does be very frightful by night," said Mr Fagan, "and indeed there's no saying quare things mightn't happen to us these quare times." His parting werds, gravely uttered, seemed to sum up the situation for many in Ireland at present "Wirra! what good is your life to you at all when you'd never know the minute that you'd lose it?” CHANDRAGUP. BY AL KHANZIR. A March this year found me at the City Station in Karachi on my way up-country after an absence from India that had extended throughout the War. CERTAIN afternoon of had started life at the "Shop " together; and we had met again, in Simla-days before the War, when he had been in the Intelligence Branch at Army Headquarters. So we were old friends. Now, if there is one thing that can make Indian railway travelling almost bearable, that thing of course is privacy. But on this particular day the train was crowded, and I looked in vain for an empty compartment. Finally, I had to content myself with an upper berth in a coupé, the lower berth of which was already taken up by a green canvas Wolseley valise. An upper berth for the two days' desert journey to Lahore it was a black business. I sat thoroughly soured and glared at that roll of bedding, wondering resentfully what manner of owner would eventually materialise. But, after a little, mere vulgar curiosity got the better of me, and I furtively turned the valise over to take a peep at any name there might be underneath. There was nothing to be seen but four large white initials. Still, these told me all I wanted: for any one with such queer initials has surely no need to name his property in full. I felt that "J.U.D.E." could stand for no one the world over but for "Judy" Elkington. Now Judy and I He had always been a good all-round man, had Judy. Within a very few pounds of the best professional jockeys on the flat, they used to say; and you might find his name, too, more than once in Rowland Ward. But that was only one side of him. For he had a quaint love for roaming the byways of Indian history and religion, and Was shining light of more than one learned Asiatic Society. Still, he never rede this hobby of his to excess, and was always the best of company. I was in luck after all; the Sind desert began to lose many of its prospective horrors. 8 Just before the train started I caught sight of a wellremembered figure strolling over from the bookstall, and we were soon shaking each other by the hand and making the usual remarks and inquiries that go with such a meeting. The first hour or two of our journey were fully occupied in comparing notes. Then came Kotri Junction, with its adjournment for dinner. And afterwards, as the desert sand began imperceptibly to creep |