'Ah, Lord Dungory! do you think we shall be able to collect our rents this year? What reduction do you intend to give?' Lord Dungory, who had no intention of showing his hand, said: 'The Land League has, I believe, advised the people to pay no more than Griffith's valuation. I do not know if your lands are let very much above it?' 'If you have not seen the _Evening Mail_ you have probably not heard of the last terrible outrage,' said Captain Hibbert; and, amid a profound silence, he continued: 'I do not know if anybody here is acquainted with a Mr. Macnamara; he lives in Meath.' 'Oh! you don't say anything has happened to him? I knew his cousin,' exclaimed Mrs. Gould. Captain Hibbert looked round with his bland, good-looking stare, and, as no nearer relative appeared to be present, he resumed his story: 'He was, it seems, sitting smoking after dinner, when suddenly two shots were fired through the windows.' At this moment a champagne-cork slipped through the butler's fingers and went off with a bang. 'Oh, goodness me! what's that?' exclaimed Mrs. Gould; and, to pass off their own fears, everyone was glad to laugh at the old lady. It was not until Captain Hibbert told that Mr. Macnamara had been so severely wounded that his life was despaired of, that the chewing faces became grave again. 'And I hear that Macnamara had the foinest harses in Mathe,' said Mr. Ryan; 'I very nearly sold him one last year at the harse show.' Mr. Ryan was the laughing-stock of the country, and a list of the grotesque sayings he was supposed, on different occasions, to have been guilty of, was constantly in progress of development. He lived with his cousin, Mr. Lynch, and, in conjunction, they farmed large tracts of land. Mr. Ryan was short and thick; Mr. Lynch was taller and larger, and a pair of mutton-chop whiskers made his bloated face look bigger still. On either side of the white tablecloth their dirty hands fumbled at their shirt-studs, that constantly threatened to fall through the worn buttonholes. They were, nevertheless, received everywhere, and Pathre, as Mr. Ryan was called by his friends, was permitted the licences that are usually granted to the buffoon. 'Arrah!' he said, 'I wouldn't moind the lague being hard on them who lives out of the counthry, spendin' their cash on liquor and theatres in London; but what can they have agin us who stops at home, mindin' our properties and riding our harses?' This criticism of justice, as administered by the league, did not, however, seem to meet with the entire approval of those present. Mr. Adair looked grave; he evidently thought it was based on a superficial notion of political economy. Mr. Burke, a very young man with a tiny red moustache and a curious habit of wriggling his long weak neck, feeling his amusements were being unfairly attacked, broke the silence he had till then preserved, and said: