Yet when that week was passed, and the greater part of the next, I began to think that my schedule would never be called, in spite of the fact that each day’s paper recorded a general sweep-up all through the country. On May 10, I went to bed late as usual. I had been setting potatoes all day, and had been working making a precis of State Papers till late at night. I retired at about two o’clock in the morning. As I turned into bed, a strong presentiment came on me suddenly, almost like an oppression, that I was to be arrested the following morning. It was so strong that I thought to wake my wife; but, feeling ashamed of it, I lay wakeful and wondering.
Two hours later I was wakened by the heavy tread of many feet down the road. A large number of men were passing round the house. We leapt out of bed, and, peering through the windows, could see two peelers at each window, with rifles at the “ready.”
A man who was down on the foreshore, with my house between him and the village, afterwards described the scene. The whole force of eighteen peelers, three sergeants, and a district inspector, had charged down my _boithrin_ at the double—charged down on a house in which one man, one woman, eight hens and fifteen chickens lay asleep. There was little need for so desperate an attack.
Agitated counsels could point no better way than a peaceful surrender; so I went out to the porch, and through the window spoke to the district inspector. I told him that my wife was dressing, and that I would stand there in his sight if he would give her a few moments in which to put a few clothes about her before his men took possession of the house. He agreed. But the local sergeant had other notions of the proper and fitting thing to be done on so auspicious an occasion. Some baulks of timber were lying about the house, and with these, and some heavy rocks, he set about to batter down the doors.
Two peelers came into the bedroom with me while I dressed, while the others tied every available piece of paper that could be found into parcels. And after a hurried breakfast I was borne off on a motor car for Castlebar Jail, with a peeler sitting each side of me, and one in front, beside the driver, with loaded carbines. It was a cold, miserable morning, and a hurricane of wind and rain swept about the car.