Within an hour six boats containing the arms went down the river, and half an hour afterwards the town was surrounded and searched through and through by Auxiliary Cadets who had concentrated on the place from three different points—their only bag being the unfortunate lorry drivers.
Some three miles below Ballybor there stand on the bank of the river the ruins of a fine old Franciscan Abbey, in the vaults of which the arms were safely hidden. Afterwards Larry and his men spent the morning fishing for sea-trout towards the estuary, returning to Ballybor in the afternoon, hungry and worn-out, to fall into the hands of the Auxiliaries, who commandeered their fish and then let them go home.
After the murder of Patsey Mulligan the district of Ballybor was comparatively free from outrages for several months, and Blake, the D.I., began to think that his troubles were over; but very shortly after Larry had successfully run his cargo of American arms Blake was undeceived, and in a short time the district became one of the worst in the west.
Success made Larry bolder, and further success made him rash. Being miles from a road, the old abbey was a most inconvenient place to keep the arms, and he determined to bring them to the mill in Ballybor.
Bennett, the owner, had a house alongside the mill, and another house some miles out in the country, where he was in the habit of going from Saturday until Monday morning, when the mill house used to be locked up.
Larry arranged another fishing expedition on a Saturday afternoon, and when it was dark they transferred the arms from the abbey to the mill, hiding them under piles of sawdust in the cellars below the saw-benches. It was then decided to make an assault on the Ballybor police barracks the following night, and to wipe out the police for good and all.
But this time his luck was out. On Sunday afternoon Bennett suddenly made up his mind to return to Ballybor, and motored there in the afternoon with his eldest son. After tea his son took a walk over the mill, and to his surprise found a brand-new American repeating-rifle in the clerk’s office: his father went at once to the police barracks to inform Blake of the discovery, who arranged to make a raid on the mill as soon as it was dark.