“You are not afraid to sit next to me?” said Mr. Trench laughing. “We shall pass through some of our worst villages. If any one shoots at me you will have your share of the charge.”
“Bah!” I answered, “every landlord that I have met has been shot at two or three times. Your boys seem very unskilful!”
“All right! Drive on, Dick. Lewis, is your revolver loaded?”
“Yes, sir; here it is.”
“Ah! I must change the cartridges in mine.”
This is how we travel through county Kerry in the year of grace 1886.
But the surprises in store for me had not yet come to an end.
We had scarcely gone a hundred paces before Mr. Trench showed me an enormous building that we were passing on our right. “Do you see the castle down there?” said he. “Lord X—— lives there. Three years ago, after a dispute with one of his tenants, he was informed that his castle was doomed. It had been agreed that it should be blown up with dynamite. The Government at once sent off twenty constables, who are still there. Ten keep guard during the day and ten during the night. They cost the Government 2,000l. per annum.”
“Do you really believe that if the men were withdrawn the castle would be blown up?”
“I am absolutely certain of it. The dynamite is already prepared.”