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 or more just not to be bothered.”  Upon this Mr. Tener told me of a shopkeeper at Loughrea in a large way of business, a man with seven or eight thousand pounds, who, finding his goods about to be seized after the agent had turned a sharp strategic corner on him, and unexpectedly got into his shop, was about to own up to his defeat, and make a fair settlement, when the secretary of the League appeared, and requested a private talk with him.  In a quarter of an hour the tradesman reappeared looking rather sullen and crestfallen.  He said he couldn’t pay, and must let the goods be taken.  So taken they were, and duly put up under the process and sold.  He bought them in himself, paying all the costs.

Presently two cars appeared.  We got upon one, Mr. Tener driving a spirited nag, and taking on the seat with him a loaded carbine-rifle.  Two armed policeman followed us upon the other, keeping at such a distance as would enable them easily to cover any one approaching from either side of the roadway.  It quite took me back to the delightful days of 1866 in Mexico, when we used to ride out to picnics at the Rincon at Orizaba armed to the teeth, and ready at a moment’s notice to throw the four-in-hand mule-wagons into a hollow square, and prepare to receive cavalry.  As it seems to be perfectly well understood that the regular price paid for shooting a designated person (they call it “knocking” him in these parts) is the ridiculously small sum of four pounds, and that two persons who divide this sum are always detailed by the organisers of outrage to “knock” an objectionable individual, it is obvious that too much care can hardly be taken by prudent people in coming and going through such a country.  Fortunately for the people most directly concerned to avoid these unpleasantnesses a systematic leakage seems to exist