d. He looked at the illustrated poster which hung on a board
beside the barrack door. It proclaimed the attractiveness of service in
the British army. It moved him to no interest, because he had seen it
every day since he first came to Ballymoy. The gaudy uniforms depicted
on it excited no envy in his mind. His own uniform was of sober
colouring, but it taught him all he wanted to know about the discomfort
of such clothes in hot weather. His eyes wandered from the poster and
remained fixed for some time on the front of the office of the Connacht
Advocate. The door was shut and the window blind was pulled down. An
imaginative man might have pictured Mr. Thaddeus Gallagher, the
editor, penning ferocious attacks upon landlords at his desk inside,
or demonstrating, in spite of the high temperature, the desperate
wickedness of all critics of the Irish Party. But Moriarty was by
temperament a realist. He suspected that Thaddeus Gallagher, divested of
his coat and waistcoat, was asleep, with his feet on the office table.
Next to the newspaper office was the Imperial Hotel, owned and managed
by Mr. Doyle. Its door was open, so that any one with sufficient energy
for such activity might go in and get a drink at the bar. Moriarty gazed
at the front of the hotel for a long time, so long that the glare of
light reflected from its whitewashed walls brought water to his eyes.
Then he turned and looked into the barrack again. Beside him, just
outside the door of the living-room, hung a small framed notice, which
stated that Constable Moriarty was on guard. He looked at it. Then he
peeped into the living-room and satisfied himself that the sergeant
was still sound asleep. It was exceedingly unlikely that Mr. Gregg, the
District Inspector of the Police, would visit the barrack on such a very
hot day. Moriarty buttoned his tunic, put his forage cap on his head,
and stepped out of the barrack.

He crossed the square towards Doyle's Hotel. A hostile critic of
the Royal Irish Constabulary--and there are such critics even of this
excellent body of men--might have suspected Moriarty of adventuring in
search of a drink. The great heat of the day and the extreme dulness
of keeping guard over a barrack which no one ever attacks might have
excused a longing for bottled porter. It would have been unfair to blame
Moriarty if he had entered the bar of the hotel and wakened Mr. Doyle.
But he did no more than glance through the open door. He satisfied