pocket)
beggars--within a few hundred yards of it--wouldn't it be rather hard to
let them die an' starve in destitution, an' them wishin' to get it back
at a raisonable rint?"

"In this country, brother soldier," replied Dick ironically, "we
generally starve first and die afterwards."

"You may well say so, your honor, an' God knows, there's not upon the
face of the arth a counthry where starvation is so much practised, or so
well understood. Faith, unfortunately, it's the national divarsion wid
us. However, is what I'm sayin' raisonable, gintlemen?"

"Exceedingly so," said Dick; "go on."

"Well, then, I wish to know, will you give them a new lease of their
farm?"

"You do! do you?"

"Troth I do, your honor."

"Well, then," replied the son, "I beg to inform you that we will not."

"Why so, your honor?"

"Simply, you knave," exclaimed the father, in a passion, "because we
don't wish it. Kick him out, Dick!"

"My good friend and brother soldier," said Dick, "the fact is, that we
are about to introduce a new system altogether upon our property. We are
determined to manage it upon a perfectly new principle. It has been too
much sublet under us, and we have resolved to rectify this evil. That is
our answer. You get no lease. Provide for yourself and your friends, the
Daltons, as best you can, but on this property you get no lease. That is
your answer."

"Begone, now, you scoundrel," said the father, "and not a word more out
of your head."

"Gintlemen!--gintlemen!"--exclaimed the pedlar, "have you no
consciences? Is there no justice in the world? The misery, and sorrow,
and sufferin's of this misfortunate family, will be upon you, I doubt,
if you don't do them justice."

"Touch the bell, Dick! Here some one! Jemmy Branigan! Harry Lowry! Jack
Clinton! Where are you all, you scoundrels? Here, put this rascal in the
stocks immediately! in with him!"

Jemmy, who, from an adjoining room, had been listening to every word
that passed, now entered.

"Here, you, sir: clap this vagabond in the stocks for his insolence. He
has come here purposely to insult myself and my son. To the stocks with
him at once."

"No!" replied Jemmy; "the devil resave the stock will go on him this
day. Didn't I hear every word that passed? An' what did he say but the
thruth, an' what every one knows to be the thruth?"

"Put him in the stocks, I desire you, this instant!"

"Throth if you wor to look at your mug in the glass, you'd fe