hunger in spite of cowld and want.  If you could see how the father of a family, after striving to bear up, sinks down at last; if you could see the look he gives at the childhre that he would lay down his heart’s blood for, when they sit naked and hungry about him; and the mother, too, wid her kind word and sorrowful smile, proud of them in all their destitution, but her heart breaking silent!  All the time, her face wasting away.  Her eye dim, and her strength gone—­Sir, make one such family happy—­for all this has been in my father’s house!  Give us back our light spirits, our pleasant days, and our cheerful hearts again!  We lost them through the villainy of your agent.  Give them back to us, for you can do it; but you can never pay us for what we suffered.  Give us, sir, our farm, our green fields, our house, and every spot and nook that we had before.  We love the place, sir, for its own sake;—­it is the place of our fathers, and our hearts are in it.  I often think I see the smooth river that runs through it, and the meadows that I played in when I was a child;—­the glen behind our house, the mountains that rose before us when we left the door, the thorn-bush at the garden, the hazels in the glen, the little beach-green beside the river—­Oh, sir, don’t blame me for crying, for they are all before my eyes, in my ears, and in my heart!  Many a summer evening have I gone to the march-ditch of the farm that my father’s now in, and looked at the place I loved, till the tears blinded me, and I asked it as a favor of God to restore us to it!  Sir, we are in great poverty at home; before God we are; and my father’s heart is breaking.”

The Colonel drew his breath deeply, rubbed his hands, and as he looked at the fine countenance of the boy—­expressing, as it did, enthusiasm and sorrow—­his eye lightened with a gleam of indignation.  It could not be against the poor scholar; no, gentle reader, but against his own agent.

“O’Brien,” said he, “what do you think, and this noble boy is the son of a man who belongs to a class of which I am ignorant!  By Heaven, we landlords are, I fear, a guilty race.”

“Not all, sir,” replied the Curate.  “There are noble exceptions among them; their faults are more the faults of omission than commission.”

“Well, well, no matter.  Come, I will draw up the informations against this man; afterwards I have something to say to you, my boy,” he added, addressing Jemmy, “that will not, I trust, be unpleasant.”

He then drew up the informations as strongly as he could word them, after which Jemmy deposed to their truth and accuracy, and the Colonel, rubbing his hands again, said—­

“I will have the fellow secured.  When you go into town, Mr. O’Brien, I’ll thank you to call on Meares, and hand him these.  He will lodge the miscreant in limbo this very night.”

Jemmy then thanked him, and was about to withdraw, when the Colonel desired him to remain a little longer.