“And who made the Committee?”

“Oh, they made themselves, I suppose, sir.  There was Sir Thomas Esmonde—­he was a convert, you know, of Father O’Neill—­and Mr. Mayne and Mr. John Dillon.  And Dr. Dillon of Arklow, he was as busy as he could be till the evictions were made in July.  And then he was in retreat.  And I believe, sir, it is quite true that he wanted the Bishop to let him come out of the retreat just to have a hand in the business.”

The police sergeant, a very cool, sensible man, quite agreed with the bailiff as to the influence upon the present situation of the ex-gamekeeper Kinsella, and his friend Eyan.  “If they were two Invincibles, sir,” he said, “these member fellows of the League couldn’t be in greater fear of them than they are.  They say nothing, and do just as they please.  That Kinsella, when Mr. John Dillon was down here, just told him before a lot of people that he ’wanted no words and no advice from him,’ and he’s just in that surly way with all the people about.”

As to the Brooke estate, I am told here it was bought more than twenty years ago with a Landed Estates Court title from Colonel Forde, by the grandfather of Mr. Brooke.  He paid about L75,000 sterling for it.  His son died young, and the present owner came into it as a child, Mr. Vesey being then the agent, who, during the minority, spent a great deal on improving the property.  Captain Hamilton came in as agent only a few years ago.  While the Act of 1881 was impending, an abatement was granted of more than twenty per cent.  In 1882 the tenants all paid except eleven, who went into Court and got their rents cut down by the Sub-Commissioners.  There were appeals; and in 1885, after Court valuations, the rents cut down by the Sub-Commissioners were restored in several cases.  There never was any rack-renting on the estate at all.  There are upon it in all more than a hundred tenants, twelve of whom are Protestants, holding a little less in all than one-fourth of the property.

There are fifteen judicial tenants, twenty-one lease-holders, and seventy-seven hold from year to year.

The gross rental is a little over L2000 a year of which one-half goes to Mr. Brooke’s mother.  Mr. Brooke himself is a wealthy man, at the head of the most important firm of wine-merchants in Ireland, and he has repeatedly spent on the property more than he took out of it.

The house of Sir Thomas Esmonde, M.P., was pointed out to me from the road.  “Sir Thomas is to marry an heiress, sir, isn’t he, in America?” asked an ingenuous inquirer.  I avowed my ignorance on this point.  “Oh, well, they say so, for anyway the old house is being put in order for now the first time in forty years.”

We reached Arklow in time for luncheon, and drove to the large police barracks there.  These were formerly the quarters of the troops.  Arklow was one of the earliest settlements of the Anglo-Normans in Ireland under Henry II., and once rejoiced in a castle and a monastery both now obliterated; though a bit of an old tower here is said to have been erected in his time.  The town lives by fishing, and by shipping copper and lead ore to South Wales.  The houses are rather neat and well kept; but the street was full of little ragged, merry mendicants.