When they arrive in Dublin aboard a train they are greeted by a fervently nationalistic crowd, waving Irish tricolours. Coyne returns to his upper-middle-class family in Dublin. He has secured a place at the prestigious Trinity College Dublin, leading to the contempt of some of his working-class fellow Easter Rising veterans. However, Coyne is soon involved with separatist politics again. He involves himself in vote-rigging in the 1918 General Election in an attempt to boost Sinn Féin's chances against the liberal nationalist Irish Parliamentary Party and unionist Irish Unionist Party, much to the disgust of his respectable parents. Sinn Féin won the election in a landslide victory, often for uncontested seats, and this gave a more official nature to their claim to speak for the people of Ireland. His involvement leads to Coyne again becoming involved with the militant wing of the movement, who wanted to drive out the British by killing British soldiers and members of the Royal Irish Constabulary. One of the veterans of the Easter Rising, Michael Collins is playing a leading role in the embyronic Irish Republican Army. A number of events such as the burial of County Meath militant Thomas Ashe, who had died on hunger strike, persuaded Coyne and many other Irishmen to take up arms against the government forces. It is now 1920. Posing as an insurance salesman, Coyne is sent to the west of the country to co-ordinate rebel activities there. Arriving in West Cork, Coyne is angered to find the local movement disorganised and ill-equipped with commanders who are halfhearted and reluctant to disturb their quiet lives in the small community. With a new-found assertiveness, Coyne re-invigorates the recruits, stealing rifles from a British unit and later mounting a successful ambush of an army patrol. Coyne is worried when his men speak of how they plan to fight the Irish Protestant Unionists after they have driven out the British. He and another rebel are forced to kill two RIC officers who stumble upon their activities. Coyne swells with pride at his leadership abilities and he cockily seduces the daughter of a farmer who shelters him and several of his men, an act he soon regrets as he remembers his feelings for Ita. In Belfast, Tom O'Toole and Albert Kelly stage an attack on the headquarters of the RIC to avenge the deaths of members of Ita's family who were brutally gunned down by an RIC murder squad. The attack fails and both O'Toole and Kelly are wounded and captured.