A gentleman named Nield was killed in Mayo, simply because he was mistaken for my son Maurice.  This was in broad daylight, in the town of Charlestown.  It was raining hard at the time—­a thing so common in Ireland that no one mentions it any more than they do the fact of the daily paper appearing each morning—­and the unfortunate victim had an umbrella up, so the mob could not see his face.  They shouted, ’Here’s Hussey,’ and tried to pull him off the car, but the parish priest stopped this.  However, before he could reduce the villains to the fear of the Church, which does affect them more than the fear of the Law, they gave poor Nield a blow on the head, and, though he lived for six months, he never recovered.

Another time, when returning to his house in Mayo from Ballyhaunis, on a dark night, my son Maurice found a wall built, about eighteen inches high, across the road, for the express purpose of upsetting him.  It was only by the grace of God—­as they say in Kerry—­and his own careful driving, that he was preserved.

In those same Land League times, my son was a prominent gentleman rider.  At Abbeyfeale races he rode in a green jacket and won the race, which produced a lot of enthusiasm, the crowd not knowing who it was sporting the popular colour.  They only heard it was my son after he had left the course, whereupon a mob rushed to the station, and the police had to stand four deep outside the carriage window to protect him, to say nothing of an extra guard at the station gates.

The cordiality of my fellow-countrymen also provided me with another disturbed night at Aghadoe, which I had leased from Lord Headley.

To quiet the apprehensions of my family, and also to relieve the mind of the D.I. from anxiety about my tough old self, there were always five police in the house, and two on sentry duty all night.

On this particular date, about two o’clock in the morning, we were aroused by hearing shots fired in the wood below the house, the plan of the miscreants being to draw the police away from the house.  As this did not succeed, a second party began a counter demonstration in another quarter.  The theory is that a third party wanted to approach the house from the back in the temporary absence of the constabulary, and disseminate the house, its contents, and the inhabitants into the air and the immediate vicinity by the gentle and persuasive influence of dynamite.

However, the police were not to be tricked, and soon the fellows, having grown apprehensive, or having exhausted all their ammunition, were heard driving off.  Signs of blood were found on the road towards Beaufort next morning, so the attacking force suffered some inconvenience in return for giving us a bad night.

Lord Morris, among a group of acquaintances in Dublin, pointing to me, said:—­

’That’s the Jack Snipe who provided winter shooting for the whole of Kerry, and not one of them could wing him.’