to his steed, and
rode away. No thanks, indeed, were deserved; for the moment he was out
of hearing, both cursed him after the manner of their country.

'Bad luck go with you, then!--And may you break your neck before you get
home, if it was not for the LASE I'm to get, and that's paid for.'

Lord Colambre followed the crowd into a public-house, where a new scene
presented itself to his view.

The man to whom St. Dennis gave the bag of gold was now selling this
very gold to the tenants, who were to pay their rent next day at the
castle.

The agent would take nothing but gold. The same guineas were bought and
sold several times over, to the great profit of the agent and loss of
the poor tenants; for, as the rents were paid, the guineas were
resold to another set, and the remittances made through bankers to the
landlord; who, as the poor man who explained the transaction to Lord
Colambre expressed it, 'gained nothing by the business, bad or good, but
the ill-will of the tenantry.'

The higgling for the price of the gold; the time lost in disputing about
the goodness of the notes, among some poor tenants, who could not read
or write, and who were at the mercy of the man with the bag in his hand;
the vexation, the useless harassing of all who were obliged to submit
ultimately--Lord Colambre saw; and all this time he endured the smell of
tobacco and whisky, and of the sound of various brogues, the din of men
wrangling, brawling, threatening, whining, drawling, cajoling, cursing,
and every variety of wretchedness.

'And is this my father's town of Clonbrony?' thought Lord Colambre. 'Is
this Ireland?--No, it is not Ireland. Let me not, like most of those
who forsake their native country, traduce it. Let me not, even to my own
mind, commit the injustice of taking a speck for the whole. What I have
just seen is the picture only of that to which an Irish estate and Irish
tenantry may be degraded in the absence of those whose duty and interest
it is to reside in Ireland to uphold justice by example and authority;
but who, neglecting this duty, commit power to bad hands and bad
hearts--abandon their tenantry to oppression, and their property to
ruin.'

It was now fine moonlight, and Lord Colambre met with a boy, who said
he could show him a short way across the fields to the widow O'Neill's
cottage.

CHAPTER XII

All were asleep at the cottage, when Lord Colambre arrived, except the
widow, who was sitting up, waitin