As a neighbour he was extremely kind and obliging, ready whenever applied to, to help us, as far as he was able, in every difficulty or trial in which we might be placed.  The bare suspicion, therefore, of being ever so remotely connected with the recent explosion, is, to us, a source of the deepest pain, a suspicion we repudiate with honest indignation.  Furthermore, the singular charity, benevolence, and amiability of Mrs. Hussey are long and intimately known to us.  We witness almost daily her bountiful treatment of the poor, and tender care of the sick and infirm.  Her ears never refuse to listen with sympathy to every tale of distress, nor will she hesitate with her own hands to wash and dress the festering wounds and sores of those who flock to her from all the surrounding parishes.  With such knowledge as this, we should indeed be worse than fiends did we raise a hand against the Hussey family, or engage in any enterprise that would necessitate their departure from among us:—­

  ’Richard Fitzgerald. 
   Denis Daly. 
   John Reynolds. 
   Cornelius Daly. 
   William Hogan. 
   Darby Leary. 
   John Mason. 
   Jeremiah Dinan. 
   J. O’connell. 
   John Neligan. 
   Daniel Neill. 
   John Daly. 
   Thomas Connor. 
   Jeremiah Connor. 
   Thomas Shanahen. 
   Michael Moynihar. 
   Widow Aherne. 
   James O’sullivan. 
   John M’elligott. 
   Henry Gentleman.’

As for those really concerned, people tell me that the three implicated in the dynamite business are all dead in America, and if the information is accurate no local person was connected with the explosion, though the miscreants were, of course, housed in the immediate vicinity.

There was one delicious incident.

The local branch of the Land League at Castleisland refused to pay any reward to the dynamiters because we had not been killed, and the leading miscreant actually fired at the treasurer.  Eventually the passages to America of all the triumvirate were paid, and they thought it discreet to quit the country, cursing their own stingy executive even more deeply than they blasphemed against the Law and execrated me.

A man from the neighbourhood subsequently wrote to me from London that he could tell me who perpetrated the Edenburn outrage.

I told him to call on me at the Union Club, of which I was then a member, and informed him—­his name was O’Brien—­I would arrange with the Home Office, in the event of his information being valuable, that he should get a reward.

He replied that his life was in danger in London from another Fenian.

I went to the Home Office and saw Mr. Jenkinson on the subject.  He asked me to send O’Brien down to him and he would settle matters, adding that he had reason for believing that the story of threats from another scoundrel was true.

I saw O’Brien and told him to call on Mr. Jenkinson.