that with all his industry he had been only able to muster five and twenty shillings, and his rent was above five pounds.  So, after a good deal of painful deliberation, he thought of selling his single cow, thinking that by redoubled exertion he might after a while be enabled to repurchase her; forgetting, that before the cow was sold was really the time to make the exertion.  A circumstance that greatly damped his ardor in this design was the idea of his wife’s not acquiescing in it; and one evening, as they sat together by the light of the wood and turf fire, he thus opened his mind—­

“Ellen, asthore, its myself that’s sorry I haven’t a fine large cabin, and a power o’ money, to make you happier an’ comfortabler than you are.”

“Owen,” she interrupted, “don’t you know I’m very happy? an’ didn’t I often tell you, that it was the will of Providence that we shud be poor’?  So it’s sinful to be wishin’ for riches.”

“Bud, Ellen acushla, it’s growi’n’ worse wid us every day; an’ I’m afeard the trouble is goin’ to come on us.  You know how hard the master’s new agint is—­how he sould Paddy Murphy’s cow, an’ turned him out, bekase he couldn’t pay his rint; an’ I’m afeard I’ll have to sell Black Bess,’ to prevint his doin’ the same wid us.”

“Well, Owen agra, we mustn’t murmur for our disthresses; so do whatever you think right—­times won’t be always as they are now.”

“Bud, Ellen,” said he, “you’re forgettin’ how you’ll miss the dhrop ov milk, an’ the bit of fresh butter, fur whin we part wid the poor baste, you won’t have even thim to comfort you.”

“Indeed, an’ iv I do miss them, Owen,” she answered, “shure it’s no matther, considherin’ the bein’ turned out ov one’s home into the world.  Remember the ould sayin’ ov, ‘out ov two evils always chuse the laste;’ an’ so, darlint, jist do whatever you think is fur the best.”

After this conversation, it was agreed on by both that Owen should set out the next day but one for the town, to try and dispose of the “cow, the crathur;” and although poverty had begun to grind them a little, still they had enough to eat, and slept tranquilly.  However, it so happened, that the very morning on which he had appointed to set out, Black Bess was seized for a long arrear of a tax that had not been either asked or paid there for some time, and driven off, with many others belonging to his neighbors, to be sold.  Now you must know, good reader, that there is a feeling interwoven, as it were, in the Irish nature, that will doggedly resist anything that it conceives in the slightest or most remote degree oppressive or unjust; and that feeling then completely usurped all others in Owen’s mind.  He went amongst his friends, and they condoled with one another about their grievances; there was many a promise exchanged, that they would stand by each other in their future resistance to what they considered an unlawful impost.  When the rent-day came, by disposing of his two pigs, and by borrowing a little, he was enabled to pay the full amount, and thus protract for some time the fear “ov bein’ turned out on the world.”