“Yes,” said one of the tenants, “and our cattle’d be driven into the Shannon, and drownded, and washed away.”

“You must understand,” interposed Mr. Tener “that when cattle are thus maliciously destroyed the owners can recover nothing unless the remains of the poor beasts are found and identified within three days.”

The disgust which I felt and expressed at these revelations seemed to encourage the tenants.  One of them said that before the evictions came off certain of the National Leaguers visited him, and told him he must resist the officers.  “I consulted my sister,” he said, “and she said, ’Don’t you be such a fool as to be doing that; we’ll all be ruined entirely by those rascals and rogues of the League.’  And I didn’t resist.  But only the other day I went to a priest in the trouble we are in, and what do you think he said to me?  He said, ’Why didn’t you do as you were bid? then you would be helped,’ and he would do nothing for us!  Would you think that right, sir, in your country?”

“I should think in my country,” I replied, “that a priest who behaved in that way ought to be unfrocked.”

“Did you pay over all your rent into the hands of the trustees of the League?” I asked of one of these tenants.

“I paid over money to them, sir,” he replied.

“Yes,” I said, “but did you pay over all the amount of the rent, or how much of it?”

“Oh!  I paid as much as I thought they would think I ought to pay!” he responded, with that sly twinkle of the peasant’s eye one sees so often in rural France.

“Oh!  I understand,” I said, 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