The scene that presented itself in Condy Dalton’s miserable cabin was one, indeed, which might well harrow any heart not utterly callous to human sympathy.  The unhappy old man had been sitting in the armchair we have alluded to, his chin resting on his breast, and his mind apparently absorbed in deep and painful reflection, when the officers of justice entered.  Many of our Landlord readers, and all, probably, of our Absentee ones, will, in the simplicity of their ignorance regarding the actual state of the lower classes, most likely take it for granted that the picture we are about to draw exists nowhere but in our own imagination.  Would to God that it were so!  Gladly and willingly would we take to ourselves all the shame; acknowledge all the falsehood; pay the highest penalty for all the moral guilt of our misrepresentations, provided only any one acquainted with the country could prove to us that we are wrong, change our nature, or, in other words, falsify the evidence of our senses and obliterate our experience of the truths we are describing.

Old Dalton was sitting, as we have said, in the only memorial of his former respectability now left him—­the old arm-chair—­when the men bearing the warrant for his arrest presented themselves.  The rain was pouring down in that close, dark, and incessant fall, which gives scarcely any hope of its ending, and throws the heart into that anxious and gloomy state which every one can feel and perhaps no one describe.

The cabin in which the Daltons now lived was of the poorest description.  When ejected from their large holding by Dick o’ the Grange, or in other words, were auctioned out, they were unhappily at a loss where to find a place in which they could take a temporary refuge.  A kind neighbor who happened to have the cabin in question lying unoccupied, or rather waste upon his hands, made them an offer of it; not, as he said, in the expectation that they could live in it for any length of time, but merely until they could provide themselves with a more comfortable and suitable abode.

“He wished,” he added, “it was better for their sakes; and sorry he was to see such a family brought so low as to live in it at all!”

Alas! he knew not at the time how deeply the unfortunate family in question were steeped in distress and poverty.  They accepted this miserable cabin; but in spite of every effort to improve their condition, days, weeks, and months passed, and still found them unable to make a change for the better.

When Darby and Sarah entered, they found young Con, who had now relapsed, lying in one corner of the cabin, on a wretched shake-down bed of damp straw; while on another of the same description lay his amiable and affectionate sister Nancy.  The cabin stood, as we have said, in a low, moist situation, the floor of it being actually lower—­which is a common case—­than the ground about it outside.  It served, therefore, as a receptacle for the damp