and must observe the result of care and neatness. His plot at home is so small that it could be kept like a garden. Yet on his return from England he rises at nine o'clock, lounges idly all day round his reeking cabin, leaving his wife to dig the half-tilled and ill-grown potatoes for dinner; after which he visits his neighbours' houses, playing cards or listening to exciting discourses in his native tongue on the approach of England's downfall and Ireland's freedom until night, when he flings himself with his wife and family, men, women, and children, into a common bed. From this property Mr. Brereton must collect the rents as best he can, the bailiff generally watching the return from England, when the rent may be paid before the money has been spent. A whisper that emigration would be assisted was received as a challenge to the death, and among the five or six thousand souls who swarm on Ballynolan are many who in entertaining the idea of shooting an agent would only consider per contra the remote possibility of detection. So Mr. Brereton has let them be.

Not that he has made no friends. He has found among the tenants men as honest as he could desire; men, too, who understand his difficulties and appreciate his efforts to improve their position by increasing their farms to good workable size; and if they have not spoken openly in his favour when attacks have been made upon him, Mr. Brereton in turn recognizes the difficulty and danger of an adverse

outspoken opinion by men of their class. But when, after the Flanagan affair, Thady Ryan had agreed to shoot him for a consideration, timely information was given to him of every phase in the conspiracy, and he had the consolation of feeling that among the tenants he was not without friends, even though their practical friendship only carried them so far as to act as spies from the enemies' camp. These men have declared to him in confidence that they disapprove of the meetings, from which they have not the courage to absent themselves. Since the crusade against landlords they have come to the house by stealth and paid their rents, requesting Mr. Brereton to keep the receipts lest by any chance such damning evidence of integrity might be found in their houses. Among the Ballynolan tenants, too, are many with whom Mr. Brereton has retained amicable relations. Here the rent has always been dependent upon the proceeds of the English harvesting trip. When sickness fell upon the head of a family the rent has been allowed to run into arrear, and ultimately written off or compounded for a small proportion of the whole debt; and the average shortcomings always enter into the calculation of the income. No tenant has ever been evicted, for save by wholesale emigration there could be no hope of improving the property; and the advantage in any given case is so small as not to be worth the risk of an eviction. That risk is as a rule in inverse ratio to the size of a farm; and few care to risk

their lives for a principle where eight or nine pounds, representing three years' arrears, is the sum at stake.

The owner of Ballynolan would hail with delight any measure enabling him to sell the property to the State, and this year has wearied the agent with requests to lodge money that cannot be collected. He declares that if the tenants are not compelled to pay now they will equally refuse next year; but Mr. Brereton, who knows that the money has not been earned in England, and knows, too, how unstable are the people and how unsuited for lengthened combination, advises that matters this year be not pushed to extremities, and promises that a good harvest will go far to obliterate the effects of this agitation. In that case the most violent will fall back into the old lines, until the approach of another election once more lets loose the "politicians" who are now so cleverly dipping into Anglo-Saxon pockets on both sides of the Atlantic.

CHAPTER IV.

THE TENANTS' FRIEND.

IF you tell Mr. Casey he is a blood-sucker, he will not call you out, but if human ingenuity can compass a mischief to you he will do it. And yet no term in the English language could more clearly describe him. From the moment when, as an attorney's apprentice, he did surreptitious jobs by drawing memorials for the victims of petty-sessional justice, charging to the ignorant peasants even more than his master could have extracted, to the time when, as John Casey, Esq., Justice of the Peace, he dazzled the town of Kilnamuck with an eruption. of crests on harness, carriage, traps, buttons, and paper, he has never lost an opportunity of taking every penny that could be screwed from any person with whom he has had business relations. Mr. Casey is a small squat figure with a broad fat face, on which a beard has never grown, and a clammy hand, the most hearty grasp of which is feeble. He always meets you as if it was an unexpected, a startling pleasure. If you met him on a prairie

he would look as if he had just run against you round a corner. It is many years since Mr. Casey began life in Kilnamuck; and from the time when he pleaded infancy in defence of a process for the price of a watch that had been sold to him on credit, his master predicted that he would make his mark. Keen and patient, he worked hard and watched his opportunities. Nothing was too high for him to snatch at, too low to grovel for; and from the moment when a payment of £9 4s. admitted him upon the roll of attorneys-at-law he became the leader in the petty-sessions practice of Kilnamuck and its neighbourhood, and soon monopolized the best cases at quarter sessions. But well as he understood the business of an attorney the profession had no charms for him. Before many

He

years he had for a client a man whose small property was deeply mortgaged. It was not difficult to persuade the owner that he had better live abroad and leave to him the management of the estate; and from that moment his line was taken. Mr. Casey took up his residence in Camlin House, and paid regularly a small sum to the owner. had taken a lease of the place, and, at a time when labour was abundant, added to the house and remodelled the grounds. The tenants had paid large sums from time to time for various legal expenses that they did not quite understand; yet when the owner of Camlin took it into his head to return, he was presented with so enormous a bill of costs, and