’I should be delighted to give you thirty per cent. if I could afford it,’ said Mr. Barton, as soon as the question of reduction, that had been lost sight of in schemes for draining, and discussion concerning bad seasons, had been re-established; ’but you must remember that I have to pay charges, and my creditors won’t wait any more than yours will.  If you refuse to pay your rents and I get sold out, you will have another landlord here; you’ll ruin me, but you won’t do yourselves any good.  You will have some Englishman here who will make you pay your rents.’

‘An Englishman here!’ exclaimed a peasant.  ’Arrah! he’ll go back quicker than he came.’

‘Maybe he wouldn’t go back at all,’ cried another, chuckling.  ’We’d make an Oirishman of him for ever.’

’Begad, we’d make him wear the grane in raal earnest, and, a foine scraw it would be,’ said a third.

The witticism was greeted with a roar of laughter, and upon this expression of a somewhat verdant patriotism the dispute concerning the reduction was resumed.

‘Give us the land all round at the Government valuation,’ said a man in the middle of the group.

‘Why, you are only fifteen per cent. above the valuation,’ cried Mr. Scully.

For a moment this seemed to create a difference of opinion among the peasants; but the League had drawn them too firmly together to be thus easily divided.  They talked amongst themselves in Irish.  Then the old man said: 

‘We can’t take less than thirty, yer honour.  The Lague wouldn’t let us.’

‘I can’t give you more than twenty.’

‘Thin let us come on home, thin; no use us wasting our toime here,’ cried a sturdy peasant, who, although he had spoken but seldom, seemed to exercise an authority over the others.  With one accord they followed him; but, rushing forward, Mr. Scully seized him by the arm, saying: 

’Now then, boys, come back, come back; he’ll settle with you right enough if you’ll listen to reason.’

From the drawing-room window Mrs. Barton watched the conflict.  On one side she saw her daughter’s beautiful white face becoming the prize of a penniless officer; on the other she saw the pretty furniture, the luxurious idleness, the very silk dress on her back, being torn from them, and distributed among a crowd of Irish-speaking, pig-keeping peasants.  She could see that some new and important point was being argued; and it was with a wrench she detached her thoughts from the pantomime that was being enacted within her view, and, turning to Captain Hibbert, said: 

’You see—­you see what is happening.  We are—­that is to say, we may be—­ruined at any moment by this wicked agitation.  As I have said before, there is no one I should like so much as yourself; but, in the face of such a future, how could I consent to give you my daughter?—­that is to say, I could not unless you could settle at least a thousand a year upon her.  She has been brought up in every luxury.’