There followed a deadly silence of fully two minutes. Again the auctioneer called for a bid, and yet a third time—not a man in the huge crowd dared open his mouth. Land-hunger is the predominant trait in a western peasant’s character, and many men in that crowd would have risked their souls for Bridget’s farms; but so great was the power, or rather the fear of the I.R.A., that not a single man dared speak.
Seeing that it was useless to go on with the farce, Blake ordered the auctioneer to return to the car. At once the crowd broke with an angry roar, and made an ugly rush towards the road, but a volley of blank in the air quickly stopped them, and they turned to scatter in the opposite direction, while the police party returned to Ballybor.
That night, when she went to bed in the lodging-house, Bridget locked her door and piled all the furniture she could against it. About 2 A.M. some one knocked loudly at her door and bade her open, but she lay still and gave no answer. She could then hear the raiders entering the other rooms of the house, and the screams of inmates, followed by the curses of the raiders.
The girl lay shaking in bed, knowing that it was only a question of time before they came again, and when they did it gave her almost a sense of relief. This time they did not knock, and she could hear whispering, followed by a man wearing rubber soles running down the passage, and then a crash as he hurled himself against her door.
The door was rotten and gave, but the furniture still held it up, and the other men then put their shoulders against it, and finally it gave way altogether, and the whole lot pitched into her room in a heap on the floor.
As Bridget screamed, the men flashed their electric torches on to her, and by the light she could see that they all wore painted white masks, which completely covered their faces except the eyes and mouth. One great brute then seized her by the hair, and dragged her screaming down the stairs and into the street, where the others held her while the big man shaved her hair off with a razor. They then lashed her wrists and ankles, gagged her, and flung her in her nightdress into a waiting Ford, which disappeared into the night.