laughing. "But if you come to terms now with
Mr. Tener here, will you get that money back again?"

"Divil a penny of it!" he replied, with much emphasis.

Finally they got up together to take their leave, after a long whispered
conversation together.

"And if we made it half the costs?"

"No!" said Mr. Tener good-naturedly but firmly; "not a penny off the
costs."

"Well, we'll see the men, sir, just quietly, and we'll let you know what
can be done"; and with that they wished us, most civilly, good-morning,
and went their way.

We walked in the park for some time, and a wild, beautiful park it is,
not the less beautiful for being given up, as it is, very much to the
Dryads to deal with it as they list. It is as unlike a trim English park
as possible; but it contains many very fine trees, and grand open sweeps
of landscape. In a tangled copse are the ruins of an ancient Franciscan
abbey, in one corner of which lie buried together, under a monumental
mound of brickwork, the late Marquis of Clanricarde and his wife. The
walls of the Castle, burned in 1826, are still standing, and so perfect
that the building might easily enough have been restored. A keen-eyed,
wiry old household servant, still here, told us the house was burned in
the afternoon of January 6, 1826. There were three women-servants in the
house--"Anna and Mary Meehan, and Mrs. Underwood, the housekeeper"; and
they were getting the Castle ready for his Lordship's arrival, so little
of an "absentee" was the late Lord Clanricarde, then only one year
married to the daughter of George Canning. The fires were laid on in the
upper rooms, and Mrs. Underwood went off upon an errand. When she came
back all was in flames.

The deer-park is full of deer, now become quite wild. We heard them
crashing through the undergrowth on all sides. There must be capital
fishing, too, in the lake, and in the river of which it is an expansion.

While they were getting the cars ready for a drive, came up another son
of the soil. This man I found had only a small interest in the battle on
the Clanricarde estates, holding his homestead of another landlord. But
he admitted he had gone in a manner into the "combination," in that he
had paid a certain, not very large, sum, which he named, to the
trustees, "just for peace and quiet." He considered it gone, past
recovery; and he named another man with a small holding, but doing a
considerable business in other ways, who had "paid L10