a sermon he preached about her from the altar. He is now living in his old house, but his land has no crops on it, his children are in the hospital, and his wife is dead. All this, as far as I could see, was owing to the ill-judged issue of the No Rent manifesto. His landlady has granted reductions in other cases, but in his she exacted every penny of the rent and costs, because he had begun the stand.

I afterwards called on the priest, who corroborated these statements, and said it was a very sad case, and that he had preached a sermon condemning the No Rent circular as soon as it was issued. He declared that the agents preferred to have the tenants slightly in arrears, as it gave the landlord an extra pull over them; for whenever any of the agent's little army of bailiffs and rangers and multifarious stewards reported to him that a man had taken driftwood, or brushwood, or heather, or turf from the estate, he would come suddenly down on him for the rent that was owing, when he would probably not have it ready, and so might be summarily evicted. While I was talking to the priest, the parson came in to ask him to go out shooting with him; for in this parish there are, for a wonder, some Protestants

H

even among the poor, and priest and parson live side by side on terms of excellent friendship. On parting with the priest, I drove away to Kilkee, hoping to get on to Killarney on the next day.

99

CHAPTER VII.

LORD LANSDOWNE'S ESTATE-REARREST AT AN

EVICTION.

IN the last chapter I started from Milltown to Kilkee. Talking to my driver on the way I learned that he had been taken up some time ago on the charge of rioting at an eviction, and after being remanded on several occasions had been tried and acquitted; and finally, as he was leaving the gao!, was rearrested as a suspect, and shut up for six months in Kilmainham. He showed me a copy of the warrant under which he was taken, with the usual charge of inciting to the non-payment of rent. While we were driving along, a man in a donkeycart, thirsting for information, drove furiously after us, and entreated me to tell him if it was true that Mr. Gray had been imprisoned and fined. I told him it was, and he exclaimed: That Lawson is a divil. The money will not matter to Gray, but the divil will carry away Lawson by-and-bye before long as he did Keogh' A nother man remarked

'If prayers can do Mr. Gray any good, he has them from the whole country in his behalf.'

Arriving at Kilkee I found myself at a fashionable seaside resort, with beautiful cliff scenery stretching away on each side of it, closely resembling the Cornish coast. An eviction had just taken place here, and I had a talk with the late tenant, who was very eager to present me with an exact statement of his circumstances. I gave him my address at Killarney, and soon afterwards received a letter, which reminded me so forcibly of Mr. Micawber's epistolary efforts that I will reproduce its most eloquent portions. He began by saying that he would lay the matter before me 'in globo,' with a true and authentic account of the details. These details I will omit, giving only the end of the letter verbatim. It concludes as follows: 'Alas! it was from the moment I came here that the hardships and misery of a respectable career began. In 1876 I came here and did well, but in two years after a disease set in, and I lost all my cattle, viz. 17 milch cows and younger beasts, 26 in all, exclusive of milch cows. I always represented my losses to the landlord, but to no avail; he treated me with the most abject coolness, the "pound of flesh" should come forth and

no abatement. Last winter all my hay was blown away with the storm, and God knows the sale of it did not realise the cutting and saving. This year I offered him one year's rent out of the two and a half years' that was due, and in reply to my letter the sheriff came, threw me on the world, left me compassionate and homeless in the wayside by the dreary shores of the Atlantic, with the bitter breeze of a hard northerly wind blown upon me, to shelter myself near the shores of Kilkee, thrown on the world; and were it not for the kindness of a few neighbours to-day, the workhouse would be my doom.'

From Kilkee I went to Kilrush, thence by steamer up the Shannon to Tarbert, where I took a car to Listowel, and was told by my driver that a few years ago he had had the honour of driving 'Mr. Tennyson, the poet, and his sons.' At Listowel I had to wait some hours for a train, so went and watched the work of one of the numerous weavers who may be found in the West of Ireland, manufacturing frieze from the wool which the peasants spin. In the marketplace I was stopped by a suspicious policeman, who made me give him full particulars of my journey, and then pronounced that Englishmen generally travelled by twos and