“How is it with the Plan of Campaign and the Boycotting?”

“Now what use have the labourers got for the Plan of Campaign?  No more than for the moon!  And for the Boycotting, I never liked it—­but I was never afraid of it—­and there’s not been much of it here.”

“Will the Papal Decree put a stop to what there is of it?”

“I wouldn’t mind the Pope’s Decree no more than that door!” he exclaimed indignantly.  “Hasn’t he enough, sure, to mind in Rome?  Why didn’t he defend his own country, not bothering about Ireland!”

“Are you not a Catholic, then?” I asked.

“Oh yes, I’m a Catholic, but I wouldn’t mind the Decree.  Only remember,” he added, after a pause, “just this:  it don’t trouble me, for I’ve nothing to do with the Plan of Campaign—­only I don’t want the Pope to be meddlin’ in matters that don’t concern him.”

“It’s out of respect, then, for the Pope that you wouldn’t mind the Decree?”

“Just that, intirely!  It was some of them Englishmen wheedled it out of him, you may be sure, sir.”

“I am told you went out to America once.”

“Yes, I went there in ’48, and I came back in ’51.”

“What made you go?” I asked.

“Is it what made me go?” he replied, with a sudden fierceness in his voice.  “It was the evictions made me go; that we was put out of the good holding my father had, and his father before him; and I can never forgive it, never!  But I came back; and it was * * * father that was the good man to me and to mine, else where would I be?”

I afterwards learned from * * * * that the evictions of which the old man spoke with so much bitterness were made in carrying out important improvements, and that it was quite true that his father had greatly befriended the emigrant when he got enough of the New World and came home.

It was curious to see the old grudge fresh and fierce in the old man’s heart, but side by side with it the lion lying down with the lamb—­a warm and genuine recognition of the kindness and help bestowed on himself.  His resentment against the landlord’s action in one generation did not in the least interfere with his recognition of the landlord’s usefulness and liberality in the next generation.

“You didn’t like America?” I said.  “Where did you live there?”

“I lived at North Brookfield in Massachusetts, a year or two,” he replied, “with Governor Amasa Walker.  Did you know him?  He was a good man; he was fond of the people, but he thought too much of the nagurs.”

“Yes,” I answered; “I know all about him, and he was, as you say, a very good man, even if he was an abolitionist.  But why didn’t you stay in North Brookfield?”

“Oh, it was a poor country indeed!  A blast of wind would blow all the ground away there was!  It does no good to the people, going to America,” he said; “they come back worse than they went!”

He is at work now in some quarries here.