In only one instance in Kerry was police protection being regarded as necessary up to the present summer, and all who know the contemporary condition of affairs will at once recollect that Mrs. Morrogh Bernard is the lady in question.

The late Mr. Edward Morrogh Bernard of Fahagh Court, Bullybrack, was a Roman Catholic, who had resided in Kerry all his life, and some five-and-twenty years ago he built on his property the residence in which he died in the spring of 1904.  He and his wife, an English lady, who was justly beloved for her wide charity, were one night, after dinner, sitting in their drawing-room, when a party of masked moonlighters walked in.  One of them held a pistol to her head, and told her not to scream or move, else he would shoot her.  Another performed the same kindly office for Mr. Bernard, whilst the rest ransacked the house for arms and money.

Mrs. Bernard noticed that the hands of the man who was threatening her with violence were not those of an agricultural labourer, because they were small and white.  On the strength of this clue, the police arrested a little tailor in the village, and she courageously identified him in court, though every possible pressure was brought on her not to do so.  He was sentenced to several years’ imprisonment, and his friends vowed they would make it hot for Mrs. Bernard, and ever after she has been protected by two or three constables.  The police did not live in Fahagh Court, but in a hut specially built for them a few yards off, and at night they always came into the house.  To the very last days of Mr. Bernard’s life whenever he and she went to pay a call on a neighbour, two policemen followed them either on a car or on bicycles, and I have never heard any reasons advanced to show that these precautions were superfluous.

Meeting this little party on the highway was the only thing in the twentieth century which brought home to the British tourist the terrible deeds which blackened Kerry in the eighties.

I have always looked on the light side of life, even when it has seemed blackest, and so I will not close this chapter without a more cheery anecdote.

There was a good deal of friction among Land Leaguers over the amount of relief money and other remuneration doled out by the rebel authorities.  This seldom reached a more droll pitch than in the complaint of a girl at Rossbeigh, who wrote to a prominent member of Parliament—­since deceased—­that another girl had been awarded a pound for booing at a sergeant, ’while I, who broke a policeman’s head, never got so much as would pay for a candle to the Blessed Virgin.’

Sometimes the crafty Paddy utilised the agitation for his own purposes, as the following example will prove.

A farmer’s house was fired into, but no one could tell the reason why, for he had not paid any rent and was a good Land Leaguer.  He was asked if he could account for it himself, and after some shuffling under promise of strict secrecy, made the following revelation.