“Your honer may remimber, that when you came here first, the cattle of the neighbors was used to come and pick a mouthful of grass,--and poor grass it was,--bekase there was no way of keeping them out. Well, when the master came down, and all the people, by coorse the cows and pigs couldn't be let in as afore; for, as the agint said, it was a disgrace to see them under the nose of the quality, running about as if it was Donnybrook fair! 'Don't let them appear here again, Tom Keane,' says he, 'or it will be worse for you.' And sorra one ever I let in since that, till it was dark night. But ould Mr. Kennyfeck, the other evening, takes it into his head to walk into the park, and comes right into a crowd of two-year-old bulls, and did n't know a bit where he was, till a man called out, 'Lie down on your face, for the love of the Virgin, or you are a dead man! The bullsheens is comin'!' And down he lay, sure enough, and hard work they had to get him up afterwards, for the herd went over him as the man drov' them off; and what between bruises and fear, he kept his bed two days; but the worst of it was, the spalpeens said that they paid threepence apiece for the bullsheens every night for the grass, and it was to me they gave it.” “Which, of course, was untrue?” said Linton, smiling knowingly. “By coorse it was!” said Tom, with a laugh, whose meaning there was no mistaking; “and so, I 'm to be turned out of 'the gate,' and to lose my few acres of ground, and be thrun on the wide world, just for sake of an attorney!” “It is very hard,--very hard indeed.” “Is n't it now, your honer?” “A case of destitution, completely; what the newspapers call 'extermination.'” “Exactly, sir,--tarnination, and nothing less.” “But how comes it that you are up here, on that account?” “I was thinking, sir, if I saw Miss Mary, and could get her to spake a word to the master,--they say she can do what she plazes with him.” “Indeed!--who says so?” “The servants' hall says it; and so does Mr. Corrigan's ould butler. He towld me the other day that he hoped he 'd be claning the plate up at the big house before he died.” “How so?” said Linton, affecting not to catch the intention of the remark. “Just that he was to be butler at the hall when the master was married to Miss Mary.” “And so, I suppose, this is very likely to happen?” “Sure yer honer knows betther than ignorant craytures like us; but faix, if walking about in the moonlight there, among the flowers, and talking together like whisperin', is any sign, I would n't wonder if it came about.” “Indeed! and they have got that far?” “Ay, faith!” said Tom, with a significance of look only an Irishman or an Italian can call up. “Well, I had no suspicion of this,” said Linton, with a frankness meant to invite further confidence.