what right and authority, sirra, did you dare to cut turf
on that part of the bog called Berwick's Bank?"

"Upon the right and authority of my lease, Sir Thomas," replied
Trailcudgel; "and with great respect, sir, you had neither right nor
authority for settin' my bog, that I'm payin' you rent for, to another
tenant."

The baronet grew black in the face, as he always did when in a passion,
and especially when replied to.

"You are a lying scoundrel, sirra," continued the other; "the bog does
not belong to you, and I will set it to the devil if I like."

"I know nobody so fit to be your tenant," replied Trailcudgel. "But I
am no scoundrel, Sir Thomas," added the independent fellow, "and there's
very few dare tell me so but yourself."

"What, you villain! do you contradict me? do you bandy words and
looks with me?" asked the baronet, his rage deepening at Trailcudgel's
audacity in having replied at all.

"Villain!" returned his gigantic tenant, in a voice of thunder. "You
called me a scoundrel, sirra, and you have called me a villain, sirra,
now I tell you to your teeth, you're a liar--I am neither villain nor
scoundrel; but you're both; and if I hear another word of insolence
out of your foul and lying mouth, I'll thrash you as I would a shafe of
whate or oats."

The black hue of the baronet's rage changed to a much modester tint;
he looked upon the face of the sturdy yeoman, now flushed with honest
resentment; he looked upon the eye that was kindled at once into an
expression of resolution and disdain; and turning on his toe, proceeded
at a pace by no means funereal to the steps of the hall-door, and having
ascended them, he turned round and said, in a very mild and quite a
gentlemanly tone,

"Oh, very well, Mr. Trailcudgel; very well, indeed. I have a memory, Mr.
Trailcudgel--I have a memory. Good morning!"

"Betther for you to have a heart," replied Trailcudgel; "what you never
had."

Having uttered these words he departed, conscious at the same time, from
his knowledge of his landlord's unrelenting malignity, that his own fate
was sealed, and his ruin accomplished. And he was right. In the course
of four years after their quarrel, Trailcudgel found himself, and his
numerous family, in the scene of destitution to which we are about to
conduct the indulgent reader.

We pray you, therefore, gentle reader, to imagine yourself in a small
cabin, where there are two beds--that is to say, two scanty portions of