Our readers are not, perhaps, in general, aware that a most iniquitous usage prevailed among Middlemen Landlords, whenever the leases under which their property was held were near being expired.  Indeed, as a landed proprietor, the middleman’s position differed most essentially from that of the man who held his estate in fee.  The interest of the latter is one that extends beyond himself and his wants, and is consequently transmitted to his children, and more remote descendants; and on his account he is, or ought to be, bound by the ties of a different and higher character, to see that it shall not pass down to them in an impoverished or mutilated condition.  The middleman, on the contrary, feels little or none of this, and very naturally endeavors to sweep from off the property he holds, whilst he holds it, by every means possible, as much as it can yield, knowing that his tenure of it is but temporary and precarious.  For this reason, then, it too frequently happened that on finding his tenant’s leases near expiring, he resorted to the most unscrupulous and oppressive means to remove from his land those who may have made improvements upon it, in order to let it to other claimants at a rent high in proportion to these very improvements.

Our readers know that this is not an extreme case, but a plain, indisputable fact, which has, unfortunately, been one of the standing grievances of our unhappy country, and one of the great curses attending the vicious and unsettled state of property in Ireland.

Dick-o’-the-Grange’s ejectment of Condy Dalton and his family, therefore, had, in the eyes of many of the people, nothing in it so startlingly oppressive as might be supposed.  On the contrary, the act was looked upon as much in the character of a matter of right on his part, as one of oppression to them.  Long usage had reconciled the peasantry to it, and up to the period of our tale, there had been no one to awaken and direct public feeling against it.

A fortnight had now elapsed since the scene in which young Dalton had poured out his despair and misery over the dead body of Peggy Murtagh, and during that period an incident occurred, which, although by no means akin to the romantic, had produced, nevertheless, a change in the position of Dick-o’-the-Grange himself, without effecting any either in his designs or inclinations.  His own leases had expired, so that, in one sense, he stood exactly in the same relation to the head landlord, in which his own tenants did to him.  Their leases had dropped about a twelvemonth or more before his, and he now waited until he should take out new ones himself, previous to his proceeding any further in the disposition and readjustment of his property.  Such was his position and theirs, with reference to each other, when one morning, about a fortnight or better subsequent to his last appearance, young Dick, accompanied by the Black Prophet, was seen to proceed towards the garden—­both