The individual laugh that accompanied these last observation was cruel, revolting, and hideous.  The Buck sought out the speaker among the crowd, and gave him first a nod of approval—­and almost instantly afterward added, with a quick change of countenance, but not until he perceived that this double expression was pretty generally understood—­

“Don’t, my friend—­if they get wealthy and proud upon our groans and tears an’ blood, as you say, it is not their invalidity that makes them do so, but ours.  Instead, of being cruel to them it is to ourselves we are cruel; for by peeing the aforeseed tithes we are peeing away our heart’s blood, an’ you know that if we are the fools to pee that way, small bleeme to them if they take it in the shape of good passable cash.  They—­meening sich men as Purcel—­are only the instruments with which the parsons work.”

“Ay,” replied the stern voice, “but, in case we had the country to ourselves, do you think now, Buck darlin’, that when we’d settle off the jidges, an’ lawyers, an’ sheriffs, an’ bailiffs, that we’d allow the jails or the gibbets to stan’, or the hangmen to live.  No, by japers, we’d make a clane sweep of it; and when sich a man as Purcel becomes a tool in the parsons’ hands to grind the people, I don’t see that we ought to make fish of one an’ flesh of the other.”

“Ah, Darby Hourigan, is that you?” exclaimed the Buck; “well, although I don’t exaggerate with your severity, yet I will shake hands with you.  How do you do Darby?  Darby, I think you’re a true petriot—­but, so far as Mr. Purcel is concirned, I wish you to understand that he is a particular friend of mine, and so is every mimber of his family.”

“Faith, an’ Mr. Buck, it’s more than you are with them, I can tell you.”

“But perhaps you are a little misteeken there, Mr. Hourigan,” replied the Buck, with a swagger, whilst he raised his head and pulled up the collar of his shirt at both sides, with a great deal of significant self-consequence;—­“perhaps you are—­I see so, that’s oll.  Perhaps, I repeat, there is some mimber of that family not presupposed against me, Mr. Hourigan?”

“Well, may be so,” replied the other; “but if it be so, it’s of late it must have happened, that’s what I say.”

Hourigan, who was by trade a shoemaker, was also a small farmer; but, sooth to say, a more treacherous or ferocious-looking ruffian you could not possibly meet with in a province.  He was spare and big-boned slouchy and stealthy in his gait, pale in face with dark, heavy brows that seemed to have been kept from falling into his deep and down-looking eyes only by an effort.  His cheekbones stood out very prominently, whilst his thin, pallid cheeks fell away so rapidly as to give him something the appearance of the resuscitated skeleton of a murderer, for never in the same face were the kindred spirits of murder and cowardice so hideously blended.

Much more dialogue of the description just detailed took place, in which the proctor was not without defenders; but at the same time, as we are bound to record nothing but truth, we are compelled to say, that the majority of the voices were fearfully against him.  If, however, he, the proctor and the instrument, had but few to support him, what must we not suppose the defence of the system in all its bearings to have been?