a farm there. But we don't know where he is nor his sisters any
more just now. And the wife, she thinks she would like to go out to
America and see the children."

"Do you hear from them regularly?"

"Well, it's only a few pounds they send, but they're doing very well.
Domestics they are, quite like leddies; there's their pictures on the
shelf."

"But what would you do there?"

"Ah! we'd have lodgings, the wife says, sir. But I like the ould place
myself."

"I think you are quite right there," I replied. "And do you get work
here from the farmers as the labourers do in my country?"

"Work from the farmers, sir?" he answered, rather sharply. "What they
can't help we get, but no more! If the farmers in America is like them,
it's not I would be going there! The farmers! For the farmers, a
labourer, sir, is not of the race of Adam! They think any place good
enough for a labourer--any place and any food! Is the farmers that way
in America?"

"Well, I don't know that they are so very much more liberal than your
farmers are," I replied; "but I think they'd have to treat you as being
of the race of Adam! But are not the farmers here, or the Guardians,
obliged to build houses for the labourers? I thought there was an Act of
Parliament about that?"

"And so there is but what's the good of it? It's just to get the
labourers' votes, and then they fool the labourers, just making them
quarrel about where the cottages shall be, what they call the 'sites';
and then there's no cottages built at all, at all. It's the lawyers, you
see, sir, gets in with the farmers--the strongest farmers--and then they
just make fools of the labourers as if there was no Act of Parliament at
all."

"But if the labourers want to go away, to emigrate," I said, "as you
want to do, to America, don't the farmers, or the Government, or the
landlords, help them to get away and make a start?"

"Not a bit of it, sir," he replied; "not a bit of it. I believe,
though," he added after a moment; "I believe they do get some help to go
to Australia. But they're mostly no good that goes that way. The best is
them that go for themselves, or their friends help them. But there's not
so many going this year."

When we drove away I asked * * if he had made any progress towards a
signature of the agreement with the labourer's wife.

"No; she couldn't be got to say yes or no. I asked her," said * * "what
reason they had for imagining that after all these years I