“We have just the proctor’s word for it. Well,” my uncle went on to say, “the most of us jumped wid joy when we heard the letter and we all began talkin as soon as he druv aff in his car. Tim Maloney said nothin. He’s a deep one, Tim, a pathriot, an rades the papers. What hev ye to say, Tim? I’m considerin, says he, the likes o’ this must be deliberated on. Sure, I spakes up, the besht we can do is to get away from here. In the wan letther I iver got from my brother in Canada, he tould me he had two cows and a calf and three pigs, an a pair o’ oxen and as much as they could ate. That’s not the pint, answers Tim, this affer prisints itself to me as a plot to get us to lave the land widout an equitable equivalent.” With doubt thrown on the landlord’s good faith, the poor people went on arguing among themselves, until a majority decided to stand out and demand better terms. On hearing this, the agent sent word they must decide within a week. If they rejected the offer, it would be withdrawn and no new one would be submitted. My uncle had come to get my advice, “For sure,” he said, “you are the only scholard in the family.” I comprehended the infamous nature of the offer. The people did not own the land, but they owned the improvements they had made on it, and had a right to be compensated for them. I knew my uncle when a boy had rented a piece of worthless bog and by the labor of himself, and afterwards of his wife, and children, had converted it into a profitable field. Should I advise him to give it up for a receipt for back rent and a free passage to Canada? I tried to find out what he thought himself. Are you for accepting the offer, uncle? “That depinds,” he answered. “Give me a crop of spuds such as we had in the ould times, an niver a step wad I muv.” I told him potatoes had been the ruin of Ireland; that placing sole dependence upon them had made her farmers neglect the proper care of the land and the raising of other crops. When the rot came or even a hard frost, such as they had in 1837, when potatoes froze in the ground, they had nothing. My uncle was a sample of his class. The lessons of Providence had been lost upon them. They would go on planting potatoes and hoping for days that would never return, for the land had become, by years of cropping, potato sick. Now, uncle, that Tim Maloney has had time for deliberating, what has he decided on? “I mit him at O’Calaghan’s lasht night,” replied my uncle, “an he tould us to rejict the affer an jine the Young Ireland min. There’ll niver be peace and plinty in Ireland, ses he, until she’s free.”