here 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.'

'Mighty poor sport they got out of it,' I answered, 'and I have an even
worse opinion of their capacity for accurate aiming than I have of their
benevolent intentions.'

Other people know more of oneself than one does, and I was much
interested to hear that, in this year of grace, the editor of the _Daily
Telegraph_ said of me:--

'Sam Hussey, yes, that's the famous Irishman they used to call
"Woodcock" Hussey, because he was never hit, though often shot at.'

I always thought 'Woodcock' Carden had the monopoly of the epithet, but
am proud to find I infringed his patent.

I was benevolently commended by a vituperative ink-slinger, Daniel
O'Shea, in his letter to the _Sunday Democrat_ in 1886, but none of
those he blackguarded were in the least inconvenienced by 'the roll of
his tongue,' as the saying is:--

'A vast number of the Irish have been heartlessly persecuted by the most
despotic landlords of Ireland, such as Lord Kenmare, Herbert, Headley,
Hussey, Winn, and the Marquis of Lansdowne, all of whom are Englishmen
by birth, and consequently aliens in heart, despots by instinct,
absentees by inclination, and always in direct opposition to the cause
of Ireland. Poor-rate, town-rate, income-tax, are nothing less than
wholesale robbery, and is it any wonder that some of th