There were no dark or fair tresses here, but only a bearded pepper-and-salt quadragenarian, with the patent purpose of hooking me at the rate of half-a-crown an hour: so I remained obdurate. But he, suddenly making up his mind:— “Well, _Sor_,” he said to me with a soft voice and the most enticing smile, “how do you _loike_ our country?” “Your country? I should like it a great deal better if one could go about it without being pestered by guides at every turning,” I said, but half-remorsefully. “How true, sir! Those guides positively infest the place. And if they only knew their trade! But they are regular swindlers, beggars who steal the tourist’s money; the shame of Ireland, that is what they are!” The conversation then commenced, and to say the truth I have no reason to repent it. The fellow is well-informed, quick-witted, incredibly talkative, and in five minutes has given me really valuable information, besides biographical details about himself. He is called MacMahon like many others in this country, for I have seen that name over twenty village shops already. Is he any relation to the Maréchal? No; he makes no pretension to that. But after all it is not improbable that they come from one root, for my friend is not, of course, without his relationship with some of the numberless kings of Ireland. “And the Marshal is a great man, a brave soldier, a true Irishman. I have his picture at home. I’ll show it to you if you do me the honour to visit my humble roof, and accept a glass of ‘mountain dew.’” * * * * * My new acquaintance has been quill-driver at a land surveyor’s, and he knows many things. This, for instance: that all people here, from the most insignificant farmer to the biggest landowner, are in debt. “All that glitters is not gold,” he says, with a melancholy smile. “Do you see that large expanse of land, sir? Well, those who own it are not perhaps richer than I, and have not perhaps always as much pocket-money as would be convenient for them. Their annual income goes to pay the interest of an enormous debt, the hereditary obligations which weigh on the property, and the normal keeping of it. Mr. Herbert, the owner of Muckross, had to emigrate to America, where he is now an attorney’s clerk, for his daily bread. The shilling you give for entering his park goes to the scraping of it. As for Lord Kenmare, he never sees as much as the tenth part of the revenue of his property, let alone his being forbidden his own grounds under pain of being shot dead! Lady Kenmare lives there alone with her children under protection of a detachment of the police.” So the masters of those two noble estates are exiled from them, one by mortgage, the other by agrarian hatred. O, irony of things! “But Lord Kenmare’s not a bad landlord, is he?” I said to MacMahon.