he ship. As he came up to receive a second dole, the good
father spied him, and staying not "to parley or dissemble," simply
fetched him a whack over the sconce with a stick, which tumbled him out
of the ship, head-foremost, into the hooker riding beside her! Quite of
another drift was a much more astonishing tale of certain proceedings
had here in February last before the Lord Chief-Justice. These took
place in connection with a motion to quash the verdict of a coroner's
jury, held in August 1887, on the body of a child named Ellen Gaffney,
at Philipstown, in King's County, which preserves the memory of the
Spanish sovereign of England, as Maryborough in Queen's preserves the
memory of his Tudor consort. Cervantes never imagined an Alcalde of the
quality of the "Crowner"' who figures in this story. Were it not that
his antics cost a poor woman her liberty from August 1887 till December
of that year, when the happy chance of a winter assizes set her free,
and might have cost her her life, the story of this ideal magistrate
would be extremely diverting.

A child was born to Mrs. Gaffney at Philipstown on the 23d of July, and
died there on the 25th of August 1887, Mrs. Gaffney being the wife of a
"boycotted" man.

A local doctor named Clarke came to the police and asked the Sergeant to
inspect the body of the child, and call for an inquest. The sergeant
inspected the body, and saw no reason to doubt that the child had died a
natural death. This did not please the doctor, so the Coroner was sent
for. He came to Philipstown the next day, conferred there with the
doctor, and with a priest, Father Bergin, and proceeded to hold an
inquest on the child in a public-house, "a most appropriate place," said
Sir Michael Morris from the bench, "for the transactions which
subsequently occurred." Strong depositions were afterwards made by the
woman Mrs. Gaffney, by her husband, and by the police authorities, as to
the conduct of this "inquest." She and her husband were arrested on a
verbal order of the Coroner on the day when the inquest was held, August
27th, and the woman was kept in prison from that time till the assizes
in December. The "inquest" was not completed on the 27th of August, and
after the Coroner adjourned it, two priests drove away on a car from the
"public-house" in which it had been held. That night, or the next day, a
man came to a magistrate with a bundle of papers which he had found in
the road near Philipstown.