ng against a bit of wooden paling. It had, however, been decided
that the works at Ballydahan Hill should begin on this day, and there
were the men assembled. One fact admitted of no doubt, namely, this,
that the wages would begin from this day.

And then the men came and clustered round Herbert's horse. They were
wretched-looking creatures, half-clad, discontented, with hungry
eyes, each having at his heart's core a deep sense of injustice done
personally upon him. They hated this work of cutting hills from the
commencement to the end,--hated it, though it was to bring them wages
and save them and theirs from actual famine and death. They had not
been accustomed to the discomfort of being taken far from their homes
to their daily work. Very many of them had never worked regularly
for wages, day after day, and week after week. Up to this time such
was not the habit of Irish cottiers. They held their own land, and
laboured there for a spell; and then they would work for a spell, as
men do in England, taking wages; and then they would be idle for a
spell. It was not exactly a profitable mode of life, but it had its
comforts; and now these unfortunates who felt themselves to be driven
forth like cattle in droves for the first time, suffered the full
wretchedness of their position. They were not rough and unruly, or
inclined to be troublesome and perhaps violent, as men similarly
circumstanced so often are in England;--as Irishmen are when
collected in gangs out of Ireland. They had no aptitudes for
such roughness, and no spirits for such violence. But they were
melancholy, given to complaint, apathetic, and utterly without
interest in that they were doing.

"Yz, yer honer," said one man who was standing, shaking himself, with
his hands enveloped in the rags of his pockets. He had on no coat,
and the keen north wind seemed to be blowing through his bones; cold,
however, as he was, he would do nothing towards warming himself,
unless that occasional shake can be considered as a doing of
something. "Yz, yer honer; we've begun thin since before daylight
this blessed morning."

It was now eleven o'clock, and a pick-axe had not been put into the
ground, nor the work marked.

"Been here before daylight!" said Herbert. "And has there been nobody
to set you to work?"

"Divil a sowl, yer honer," said another, who was sitting on a
hedge-bank leaning with both his hands on a hoe, which he held
between his legs, "barring Thady Mo