garden, where he held a second
conference with Red Rody, who, on leaving him appeared in excellent
spirits, and kept winking and nodding, with a kind of burlesque good
humor, at every one whom he knew, until he reached home.

In this state stood the incidents of our narrative, suspended for
some time by the illness of the coroner, when Mr. Travers, himself a
magistrate, came to the head inn of the county town in which he always
put up, and where he held his office. He had for several days previously
gone over the greater portion of the estate, and inspected the actual
condition of the tenantry on it. It is unnecessary to say that he was
grieved at the painful consequences of the middleman system, and of
sub-letting in general. Wherever he went, he found the soil in many
places covered with hordes of pauper occupants, one holding under
another in a series that diminished from bad to worse in everything but
numbers, until he arrived at a state of destitution that was absolutely!
disgraceful to humanity. And what rendered this state of things doubly
painful and anomalous was the fact, that while these starving wretches
lived upon his employer's property, they had no claim on him as a
landlord, nor could he recognize them as tenants. It is true that these
miserable creatures, located upon small patches of land, were obliged
to pay their rents to the little tyrant who was over them, and he
again, probably to a still more important little tyrant, and so on; but
whenever it happened that the direct tenant, or any one of the series,
neglected to pay his or their rent, of course the landlord had no other
remedy than to levy it from off the soil, thus rendering it by no means
an unfrequent case that the small occupiers who owed nothing to him
or those above them were forced to see their property applied to the
payment of the head rent, in consequence of the inability, neglect, or
dishonesty of the middleman, or some other subordinate individual from
whom, they held. This was a state of things which Mr. Travers wished to
abolish, but to do so, without inflicting injury, however unintentional,
or occasioning harshness to the people, was a matter not merely
difficult but impossible. As we are not, however, writing a treatise
upon the management of property, we shall confine ourselves simply to
the circumstances only of such of the tenants as have enacted a part in
our narrative.

About a week had now elapsed since the abusive cont