TMS-Lockwood/Matis--The Sniper

The long June twilight faded into night.

Dublin lay enveloped in darkness but for the dim light of the moon that shone through fleecy clouds, casting a pale light as of approaching dawn over the streets and the dark waters of the Liffey.

Around the beleaguered Four Courts the heavy guns roared.

Here and there through the city, machine guns and rifles broke the silence of the night, spasmodically, like dogs barking on lone farms.

Republicans and Free Staters were waging civil war.

Republicans and Free Staters were waging civil war.

His face was the face of a student, thin and ascetic, but his eyes had the cold gleam of the fanatic.

His face was the face of a student, thin and ascetic, but his eyes had the cold gleam of the fanatic.

He finished the sandwich, and, taking a flask of whiskey from his pocket, he took a short drought.

Almost immediately, a bullet flattened itself against the parapet of the roof.

His bullets would never pierce the steel that covered the gray monster.

She began to talk to the man in the turret of the car.

The blood was oozing through the sleeve of his coat.

A paroxysm of pain swept through him.

The woman's corpse lay still in the gutter.

His ruse had succeeded.

He was now standing before a row of chimney pots, looking across, with his head clearly silhouetted against the western sky.

He was almost deafened with the report and his arm shook with the recoil.

Weakened by his wound and the long summer day of fasting and watching on the roof, he revolted from the sight of the shattered mass of his dead enemy.

He looked at the smoking revolver in his hand, and with an oath he hurled it to the roof at his feet.

The revolver went off with a concussion and the bullet whizzed past the sniper's head.