On rising from his bed of sickness, the prospect before him required his utmost fortitude to bear.  He was now wasted in energy both of mind and body, reduced to utter poverty, with a large family of children, too young to assist him, without means of retrieving his circumstances, his wife and himself gaunt skeletons, his farm neglected, his house wrecked, and his offices falling to ruin, yet every day bringing the half-year’s term nearer!  Oh, ye who riot on the miseries of such men—­ye who roll round the easy circle of fashionable life, think upon this picture!  To vile and heartless landlords, who see not, hear not, know not those to whose heart-breaking toil ye owe the only merit ye possess—­that of rank in society—­come and contemplate this virtuous man, as unfriended, unassisted, and uncheered by those who are bound by a strong moral duty to protect and aid him, he looks shuddering into the dark, cheerless future!  Is it to be wondered at that he, and such as he, should, in the misery of his despair, join the nightly meetings, be lured to associate himself with the incendiary, or seduced to grasp, in the stupid apathy of wretchedness, the weapon of the murderer?  By neglecting the people; by draining them, with merciless rapacity, of the means of life; by goading them on under a cruel system of rack rents, ye become not their natural benefactors, but curses and scourges, nearly as much in reality as ye are in their opinion.

When Owen rose, he was driven by hunger, direct and immediate, to sell his best cow; and having purchased some oatmeal at an enormous price, from a well-known devotee in the parish, who hoarded up this commodity for a “dear summer,” he laid his plans for the future, with as much judgment as any man could display.  One morning after breakfast he addressed his wife as follows: 

“Kathleen, mavourneen, I want to consult wid you about what we ought to do; things are low wid us, asthore; and except our heavenly Father puts it into the heart of them I’m goin’ to mention, I don’t know what well do, nor what’ll become of these poor crathurs that’s naked and hungry about us.  God pity them, they don’t know—­and maybe that same’s some comfort—­the hardships that’s before them.  Poor crathurs! see how quiet and sorrowful they sit about their little play, passin’ the time for themselves as well as they can!  Alley, acushla machree, come over to me.  Your hair is bright and fair, Alley, and curls so purtily that the finest lady in the land might envy it; but, acushla, your color’s gone, your little hands are wasted away, too; that sickness was hard and sore upon you, a colleen machree (* girl of my heart) and he that ’ud spend his heart’s blood for you, darlin’, can do nothin’ to help you!”

He looked at the child as he spoke, and a slight motion in the muscles of his face was barely preceptible, but it passed away; and, after kissing her, he proceeded: 

“Ay, ye crathurs—­you and I, Kathleen, could earn our bread for ourselves yet, but these can’t do it.  This last stroke, darlin’, has laid us at the door of both poverty and sickness, but blessed be the mother of heaven for it, they are all left wid us; and sure that’s a blessin’ we’ve to be thankful for—­glory be to God!”