to each pocket, to
be sure--and I wasn't to give your honour but one, if you would take it.
But there's the money, and I daresay it's all for the best."

On another occasion, when he was collecting the rents of a property in
the county of Longford, one tenant came forward as the spokesman of the
rest, admitted that the rents had been accepted fairly after a reduction
under the Land Act, expressed the general wish of the tenants to meet
their obligations, and wound up by asking a further abatement, "the
times were so bad, and the money couldn't be got, it couldn't indeed!"

Mr. Tener listened patiently--to listen patiently is the most essential
quality of an agent in Ireland--and finally said:--

"Very well, if you haven't got the money to pay in full, pay
three-quarters of it, and I'll give you time for the rest."

"Thank your honour!" said Pat, "and that'll be thirty pounds--and here
it is in one pound notes, and hard enough to get they are, these times!"

So Mr. Tener took the money, counted the notes twice over, and then,
writing out a receipt, handed it to the tenant.

"All right, Pat, there's your receipt for thirty-nine pounds, and I'm
glad to see ten-pound notes going about the country in these hard
times!"

By mistake the "distressful" orator had put one ten-pound note into his
parcel! He took his receipt, and went off without a word. But the
combination to get an "abatement" broke down then and there, and the
other tenants came forward and put down their money.

These incidents occurred to Mr. Tener himself. Not less amusing and
instructive was a similar mistake on a larger scale made by an
over-crafty tenant in dealing with one of Mr. Tener's friends a few
years ago in the county of Leitrim. This tenant, whom we will call
Denis, was the fugleman also of a combination. He was a cattle dealer as
well as a farmer, and having spent a couple of hours in idly eloquent
attempts to bring about a general abatement of the rents, he lost his
patience.

"Ah, well, your honour!" he said, "I can't stay here all day talking
like these men, I must go to the fair at Boyle. Will you take a
deposit-receipt of the bank for ten pounds and give me the pound change?
that'll just be the nine pounds for the half-year's rent. But all the
same, yer honour, those men are all farmers, and it's not out of the
farm at all I made the ten pounds, it's out of the dealing!"

"But you couldn't deal without a farm, Denis, for the stock