A COUNTY CLARE GENTLEMAN.

Thames Advertiser, Volume XXVI, Issue 7596, 2 August 1893, Page 1

A COUNTY CLARE GENTLEMAN.

AN ATTEMPT'MUKDRR.

, ..;■,! .' Wellington,Julyßl. I The '*' Times"- London corresponded writes' as follow*: " Clare appears ► ba'a cheerful county;in which to resid& judgingv.from^a, : letter of Mr Arnold- ■ v fp; ;the "•Times" of Monday i iant. It refers more especially to an f attempt, reported;on the 6th inst,, to I murder iMr Beadon Blood, a local resi--1 dent and a civil engineer. Mr Arnold-Foster says this is the \ fourth attempt oh.Mr Blood's life, and i that.Mfßjppd has been the object of a i horrible persecution, because he refused to allow'the reprobate son of an old retainer to remain in a cottage which ha had built for hfc ol 1 servant;. The old man would notremain himself unless his son was allowed to remain also, but Mr Blood found. the son's character so bad that-he cauld not permit him to stay. He gave his old seivant £100, and let S'Ugo. 'Such,' said Mr Arnold-Foster,' 'was Mr Blood's crime, 1 Now. let me .tell what is the punishment which has been inflicted on him in a Christian land under the Government of the Queen. I beard the account of it from the lips of the man whom these scoundrels have once more attempted to murder, I shall not forget-the occasion in a hurry. Four miles from the county town I came to the gate of a little park. At the gate stood two policemen with loaded rifles. I went up the drive and came to a one-storeyed house. In the porch lay two big English masiiffs, every window had a bullet-proofsbutter, a few yards from tbft baok of the house was a hut in which for four years there had lived six armed constables, watching day and nightpver the owner of the house. Inside, in the, little parlour, I found a gray-haired old Englishman stooping in his chair over the fire, wearing out the last years of an honourable life under the slow torture of this vile persecution. The back of the chair in which he sat was ripped across and splintered., He told me how the thing happened, This was his story:— "Shortly after I had sent my servant away, a little girl warned me that when I was in Ennis that an. ambush was laid for me and that ■ I should be murdered if I went home. I returned another way, and escaped.' Not long after four shots were fired at me as 1 drove aloog the high roads in broad daylight; the bullets went close to me. The Snider rifles which the assassins dropped in their flight were found, After that a fellow fired five shotp with a revolver through that window as I sat in this chair in the evening. One bullets tipped through tht wood an you see. All buU lets were picked up in the room. Hero is one o'| them, I ennuot go down ruy owngar(|en,without Iwoarined constables. That isflow''l live,"

•And-now a fourth ntienvt has been 'made on .thißTinhappy man's life. His brq(hei! : iiaß jaljo'dy left the country, becwaesnei too, has been thioatened yii\h fntsejr,-j Mr Arnold-Foratei' adds who,-persecute Mr Blood are perfectly well known throughout tbQ county of Qw, :