any man conceive
barbarism like this?" cried Sir Marmaduke, as with uplifted hands he
stood overwhelmed with amazement.

Wylie again whispered something, and again telegraphed to the applicant
to move off; but the little man stood his ground and continued. "'Twas
a heifer you gave Tom Lenahan, and it's a dhroll day, the M'Garrey's
warn't as good as the Lenahans, to say we'd have nothing but bees, and
them was to get a dacent baste!"

"Stand aside, sir," said Sir Marmaduke; "Wylie has got my orders about
you. Who is this?"

"Faix, me, sir--Andrew Maher. I'm come to give your honour the key--I
couldn't stop there any longer."

"What! not stay in that comfortable house, with the neat shop I had
built and stocked for you? What does this mean?"

"'Tis just that, then, your honour--the house is a nate little place,
and barrin' the damp, and the little grate, that won't burn turf at all,
one might do well enough in it; but the shop is the divil entirely."

"How so--what's wrong about it?"

"Every thing's wrong about it. First and foremost, your honour, the
neighbours has no money; and though they might do mighty well for want
of tobacco, and spirits, and bohea, and candles, and soap, and them
trifles, as long as they never came near them, throth they couldn't have
them there fornint their noses, without wishing for a taste; and so one
comes in for a pound of sugar, and another wants a ha' porth of nails,
or a piece of naygar-head, or an ounce of starch--and divil a word they
have, but 'put it in the book, Andy.' By my conscience, it's a quare
book would hould it all."

"But they'll pay in time--they'll pay when they sell the crops."

"Bother! I ax yer honour's pardon--I was manin' they'd see me far enough
first. Sure, when they go to market, they'll have the rint, and the
tithe, and the taxes; and when that's done, and they get a sack of seed
potatoes for next year, I'd like to know where's the money that's to
come to me?"

"Is this true, Wylie?--are they as poor as this?" asked Sir Marmaduke.

Wylie's answer was still a whispered one.

"Well," said Andy, with a sigh, "there's the key any way. I'd rather be
tachin' the gaffers again, than be keeping the same shop."

These complaints were followed by others, differing in kind and
complexion, but all, agreeing in the violence with which they were
urged, and all, inveighing against "the improvements" Sir Marmaduke was
so interested in carrying forward. To hear the