The estate was the property of an English, nobleman, who derived an income of thirty-two or thirty-three thousand a year from it; and who though, as landlords went, was not, in many respects, a bad one; yet when called upon to aid in relieving the misery of those from whose toil he drew so large an income, did actually remit back the munificent sum of one hundred pounds! [A recent fact.] The agent, himself, was one of those men who are capable of a just, but not of a generous action.  He could, for instance, sympathize with the frightful condition of the people—­but to contribute to their relief was no part of his duty.  Yet he was not a bad man.  In his transactions with his landlord’s tenancy, he was fair, impartial, and considerate.  Whenever he could do a good turn, or render a service, without touching his purse, he would do it.  He had, it is true, very little intercourse with the poorer class of under tenants, but, whenever circumstances happened to bring them before him, they found him a hard, just man, who paid attention to their complaints, but who, in a case of doubt, always preferred the interest of his employer, or his own, to theirs.  He had received many complaints and statements against the middlemen who resided upon the property, and he had duly and carefully considered them.  His present visit, therefore, proceeded from a determination to look closely into the state and condition of the general tenancy, by which he meant as well those who derived immediately from the head landlord, as those who held under middlemen.  One virtue he possessed, which, in an agent, deserves every praise; he was inaccessible to bribery on the one hand, or flattery on the other; and he never permitted his religious or political principles to degenerate into prejudice, so far as to interfere with the impartial discharge of his duty.  Such was Robert James Travers, Esq., and we only wish that every agent in the country at large would follow his example.

CHAPTER XXII. —­ Re-appearance of the Box—­Friendly Dialogue Between Jimmy Branighan and the Pedlar

The next morning but one after the committal of Condy Dalton, the strange woman who had manifested such an anxious interest in the recovery of the Tobacco-Box, was seated at her humble fireside, in a larger and more convenient cottage than that which we have described, where she was soon joined by Charley Hanlon, who had already made it so comfortable and convenient that she was able to contribute something towards her own support, by letting what are termed in the country parts of Ireland, “Dry Lodgings.”  Her only lodger on this occasion was our friend the pedlar, who had been domiciled with her ever since his arrival in the neighborhood, and whose principal traffic, we may observe, consisted in purchasing the flowing and luxuriant heads of hair which necessity on the one hand, and fear of fever on the other, induced the country maidens to part with.  This traffic,