“And is this my father’s town of Clonbrony?” thought Lord Colambre. “Is this Ireland? No, it is not Ireland. Let me not, like most of those who forsake their native country, traduce it. Let me not, even to my own mind, commit the injustice of taking a speck for the whole. What I have just seen is the picture only of that to which an Irish estate and Irish tenantry may be degraded in the absence of those whose duty and interest it is to reside in Ireland, to uphold justice by example and authority; but who, neglecting this duty, commit power to bad hands and bad hearts--abandon their tenantry to oppression, and their property to ruin.” It was now fine moonlight, and Lord Colambre met with a boy, who said he could show him a short way across the fields to the widow O’Neil’s cottage. CHAPTER XII. All were asleep at the cottage, when Lord Colambre arrived, except the widow, who was sitting up, waiting for him; and who had brought her dog into the house, that he might not fly at him, or bark at his return. She had a roast chicken ready for her guest, and it was--but this she never told him--the only chicken she had left; all the others had been sent with the _duty fowl_, as a present to the under-agent’s lady. While he was eating his supper, which he ate with the better appetite, as he had had no dinner, the good woman took down from the shelf a pocket-book, which she gave him: “Is not that your book?” said she. “My boy Brian found it after you in the potatoe furrow, where you dropped it.” “Thank you,” said Lord Colambre; “there are bank notes in it, which I could not afford to lose.” “Are there?” said she: “he never opened it--nor I.”