AN IRISH HEROINE.
A correspondent of the Times, who is reporting' on the working of Lord Ashbourne's Act, writes : —"I paid a visit to Mrs M'Ardle, a fine old woman between seventy and eighty years of age, who is the heroine of one of the most thrilling stories in ' Realities of Irish Life.' Her husband, Paddy M'Ardle, who died only two or three years ago, was bailiff at the Bath Estate, and one day, at the time that Bibbonism was rife in th o district, he was warned in Oarrickmacross that he would be eert-iinly shot if he went home that night. He communicated this piece of intelligence to Mrs M'Ardle, who had driven in with him, it being marketday, and she promptly told him to get out the gig and come out like a man. 'Wo afraid of them chaps! Never let such a thing be said in the country. Out with tho gig, man, this minute, and get your pistols ready, and see if they dar' attack us.' M'Ardle took the precaution to inform Mr Trench's clerk of the state of things before starting, with the result that four policemen, well armed, were sent to walk along the road beside the gig. About three miles from Carrackmacross they reach a defile, to which Mr Trench gives the name of the ' Khyber Pass,' where there is a somewhat steep ascent, and, just at a turn in the road, a high rock commanding an uninterrupted view in either direction. It was nearly dark when the party reached this spot; but tho policeman, thinking he saw the figure of a man on the rock, sprang over the fence with one of his companions, and found two men crouched on the other side, with a loaded blunderbuss, a few yards from them. There wero arrested— greatly to the disgust of Mrs M'Ardle, who called on the police to shoot them at once—tried, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment. One of them, named Thornton, then turned Queen's evidence, with the result that his companion and another man were hung and the Ribbon conspiracy rooted out of the district. 'It was very hard to live those times,' said Mrs M'Ardle's commenting on the story, while she declared with much vigour that ' Steuart Trench was a grand man.' "
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Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2575, 12 January 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)
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383AN IRISH HEROINE. Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2575, 12 January 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)
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