It was hard times for the seven McAndrews, but they were happy and contented as long as they had enough to eat, and that they had surely, for the wives of the men who got away all their fine lands and cattle, had sore hearts when they saw their men enriched at the expense of the omadhauns, and every day, unbeknown to their husbands, they carried them meat and drink. O'Toole and Giblin now had their avaricious eyes set on the house and garden, and they were on the watch for a chance to clutch them, when luck, or something worse, threw the chance in the way of O'Toole. He was returning from town one day just in the cool of the afternoon, when he spied the seven brothers by the roadside, sitting in a circle facing each other. "What may ye be doing here instead of earning yer salt, ye seven big sturks?" "We're in a bad fix, Mr. O'Toole," answered Pat. "We can't get up." "What's to hinder ye from getting up? I'd like to know." "Don't ye see our feet are all here together in the middle, and not for the life of us can we each tell our own. You see if one of us gets up he don't know what pair of feet to take with him." O'Toole was never so ready to laugh before in his life, but he thought: "Now's me chance to get the house and garden before Giblin, the mason, comes round"; so he looked very grave and said: "I suppose it is hard to tell one man's feet from another's when they're all there in a heap, but I think I can help you as I have many a time before. It would be a sorry day for ye if ye did not have me for a neighbour. What will ye give me if I help you find yer feet?" "Anything, anything we have, so that we can get up from here," answered the whole seven together. "Will ye give me the house and garden?" "Indade we will; what good is a house and garden, if we have to sit here all the rest of our lives?" "Then it's a bargain," said O'Toole; and with that he went over to the side of the road and pulled a good stout rod. Then he commenced to belabour the poor McAndrews over the heads, feet, shoulders, and any place he could get in a stroke, until with screeches of pain they all jumped up, every one finding his own feet, and away they ran. So O'Toole got the last of the property of the McAndrews, and there was nothing left for them but to go and beg. [Illustration] [Illustration] The Farmer of Liddesdale [Illustration: T]