How much longer Larry’s dissertation on the distillery laws would have continued, had not his ideas been interrupted, we cannot guess; but he saw he was coming to a town, and he gathered up the reins, and plied the whip, ambitious to make a figure in the eyes of its inhabitants. This _town_ consisted of one row of miserable huts, sunk beneath the side of the road, the mud walls crooked in every direction; some of them opening in wide cracks, or zigzag fissures, from top to bottom, as if there had just been an earthquake--all the roofs sunk in various places--thatch off, or overgrown with grass--no chimneys, the smoke making its way through a hole in the roof, or rising in clouds from the top of the open door--dunghills before the doors, and green standing puddles--squalid children, with scarcely rags to cover them, gazing at the carriage. “Nugent’s town,” said the postilion, “once a snug place, when my Lady Clonbrony was at home to white-wash it, and the like.” As they drove by, some men and women put their heads through the smoke out of the cabins; pale women, with long, black, or yellow locks--men with countenances and figures bereft of hope and energy. “Wretched, wretched people!” said Lord Colambre. “Then it’s not their fault, neither,” said Larry; “for my uncle’s one of them, and as thriving and hard a working man as could be in all Ireland, he was, _afore_ he was tramped under foot, and his heart broke. I was at his funeral, this time last year; and for it, may the agent’s own heart, if he has any, burn in--” Lord Colambre interrupted this denunciation by touching Larry’s shoulder, and asking some question, which, as Larry did not distinctly comprehend, he pulled up the reins, and the various noises of the vehicle stopped suddenly. “I did not hear well, plase your honour.” “What are those people?” pointing to a man and woman, curious figures, who had come out of a cabin, the door of which the woman, who came out last, locked, and carefully hiding the key in the thatch, turned her back upon the man, and they walked away in different directions: the woman bending under a huge bundle on her back, covered by a yellow petticoat turned over her shoulders; from the top of this bundle the head of an infant appeared; a little boy, almost naked, followed her with a kettle, and two girls, one of whom could but just walk, held her hand and clung to her ragged petticoat; forming, all together, a complete group of beggars. The woman stopped, and looked after the man. The man was a Spanish-looking figure, with gray hair; a wallet hung at the end of a stick over one shoulder, a reaping-hook in the other hand: he walked off stoutly, without ever casting a look behind him.