In November of that year, as I have already related, Mr. Egan and other tenants of Mrs. Lewis of Woodford made their demand for a 50 per cent. reduction of their rents, upon the refusal of which an attempt was made with dynamite on the 18th December to blow up the house of Mrs. Lewis’s son and agent.  All the bailiffs in the region round about were warned to give up serving processes, and many of them were cowed into doing so.  One man, however, was not cowed.  This was a gallant Irish soldier, discharged with honour after the Crimean war, and known in the country as “Balaklava,” because he was one of the “noble six hundred,” who there rode “into the jaws of death, into the valley of hell.”  His name was Finlay, and he was a Catholic.  At a meeting in Woodford, Father Coen (the priest now in arrears), it is said, looked significantly at Finlay, and said, “no process-server will be got to serve processes for Sir Henry Burke of Marble Hill.”  The words and the look were thrown away on the veteran who had faced the roar and the crash of the Russian guns, and later on, in December 1885, Finlay did his duty, and served the processes given to him.  From that moment he and his wife were “boycotted.”  His own kinsfolk dared not speak to him.  His house was attacked by night.  He was a doomed man.  On the 3d March 1886, about 2 o’clock P.M., he left his house—­which Mr. Tener pointed out to me—­to cut fuel in a wood belonging to Sir Henry Burke, at no great distance.  Twice he made the journey between his house and the wood.  The third time he went and returned no more.  His wife growing uneasy at his prolonged absence went out to look for him.  She found his body riddled with bullets lying lifeless in the highway.  The police who went into Woodford with the tale report the people as laughing and jeering at the agony of the widowed woman.  She was with them, and, maddened by the savage conduct of these wretched creatures, she knelt down over-against the house of Father Egan, and called down the curse of God upon him.

On the next day things were worse.  No one could be found to supply a coffin for the murdered man.[17] When the police called upon the priests to exert their influence and enforce some semblance at least of Christian and Catholic decency upon the people confided to their charge, the priests not only refused to do their duty, but floutingly referred the police to Lady Mary Burke.  “He did her work,” they said, “let her send a hearse now to bury him.”  The lady thus insolently spoken of is one of the best of the Catholic women of Ireland.  At her summons Father Burke, a few years only before his death, I remember, made a long winter journey, though in very bad health, from Dublin to Marble Hill to soothe the last hours and attend the death-bed of her husband.

No one who knew and loved him can wish him to have lived to hear from her lips such a tale of the degradation of Catholic priests in his own land of Galway.