For months the brother and sister—Patrick looking a typical young doctor, and Sheila dressed as a hospital nurse—carried arms and first aid to ambuscades throughout the south and west, and not the slightest suspicion appears to have been aroused in the minds of the authorities. Sheila thoroughly enjoyed the excitement, and soon became known as the Florence Nightingale of the I.R.A.
One day there came a wire from home that their mother was dangerously ill, and begging them to go to her at once. Patrick knew that if they asked leave to go, their taskmasters would refuse, and so decided to take “French leave.”
William had also been sent for, and again the two brothers and sister met. After a few days their mother took a turn for the better, but Patrick, who dreaded returning to Dublin, insisted on staying, in spite of Sheila’s urgings to get back to their work.
Soon after their mother was out of danger Sheila received an invitation to a dance at a large farmhouse about two miles away, and drove there in the car, resplendent in a Paris evening dress. Patrick and William refused to go, the former making the excuse that he did not like to leave his mother, the latter because he knew that the presence of a policeman would break up the dance.
That evening, after it was dark, William walked across the fields to see an old school friend, one of the few men in the district who would speak to him at all, and then only at night in his own house. When William left, this man warned him that Knockbrack Wood would not be a healthy place for the next few days, but when pressed for an explanation would say no more.
When William reached home he learnt from his father that during his absence a stranger had called for Patrick, and that soon afterwards the two had left hurriedly to fetch Sheila, Patrick saying that he would have to return to Dublin that night by car.
Old Dempsey seemed much upset, and after the warning received that night William’s suspicions were aroused. As soon as supper was over he retired to bed, or rather to wait in his room until the house was quiet, when he meant to bicycle back to Ballybor.
William had not been in his room more than ten minutes when he heard Sheila’s car drive up, and the front door open and shut. Then he heard Sheila come upstairs to her bedroom, followed by Patrick and strange footsteps, and then the closing of Patrick’s door.
The bedrooms of the two brothers were separated by a thin partition, and William managed to overhear enough of their conversation to make out that there was to be an ambuscade in Knockbrack Wood on Wednesday night (this being Monday), and that Patrick was returning at once to Dublin.
William lay as still as a mouse, hoping that Patrick and Sheila would not realise that he was in the house, and in their hurry forget about him. He could tell from the tone of his brother’s voice that he was not for it, but further conversation was cut short by Sheila calling out that she was ready to start.