“Why not?” I persisted, “there’s plenty of room.”

“Oh! but indeed, sir, if it wasn’t that you were going to the priest’s, Father Maher, you wouldn’t get a car at Athy—­no, not under ten pounds!”

“Not under ten pounds,” I replied.  “Would I get one then for ten pounds?”

“It’s a deal of money, ten pounds, sorr, and you wouldn’t have a poor man throw away ten pounds?”

“Certainly not, nor ten shillings either.  Is it a question of principle, or a question of price?”

The man looked around at me with a droll glimmer in his eye:  “Ah, to be sure, your honour’s a great lawyer; but he’ll come pounding along with his big horse in his own car, Mr. Lynch; and sure it’ll be quicker for your honour just driving to Father Maher’s.”

There was no resisting this, so I laughed and bade him drive on.

“Whose house is that?” I asked, as we passed a house surrounded with trees.

“Oh! that’s the priest, Father Keogh—­a very good man, but not so much for the people as Father Maher, who has everything to look after about them.”

We came presently within sight of a handsome residence, Lansdowne Lodge, the headquarters of the estate.  Many fine cattle were grazing in the fields about it.

“They are Lord Lansdowne’s beasts,” said my jarvey; “and it’s the emergency men are looking after them.”

Nearly opposite were the Land League huts erected on the holding of an unevicted tenant—­a small village of neat wooden “shanties.”  On the roadway in front of these half-a-dozen men were lounging about.  They watched us with much curiosity as we drove up, and whispered eagerly together.

“They’re some of the evicted men, your honour,” said my jarvey, with a twinkle in his eye; and then under his breath, “They’ll be thinking your honour’s came down to arrange it all.  They think everybody that comes is come about an arrangement.”

“Oh, then, they all want it arranged!”

“No; not all, but many of them do.  Some of them like it well enough going about like gentlemen with nothing to do, only their hands in their pockets.”

We turned out of the highway here and passed some very pretty cottages.

“No, they’re not for labourers, your honour,” said my jarvey; “the estate built them for mechanics.  It’s the tenants look after the labourers, and little it is they do for them.”

Then, pointing to a ridge of hills beyond us, he said:  “It was Kilbride’s father, sir, evicted seventeen tenants on these hills—­poor labouring men, with their families, many years ago,—­and now he’s evicted himself, and a Member of Parliament!”