mething he still did. He had his foibles, and
fancies, but such as they were they did not tread on the corns of any
of his poorer neighbours. He was proud of his birth, proud of his
family, proud of having owned, either in his own hands or those of
his forefathers, the same few acres,--and many more also, for his
forefathers before him had terribly diminished the property. There
was a story that his great great grandfather had lived in a palatial
residence in County Kilkenny. All this he would tell freely, and
would remark that to such an extent had the family been reduced by
the extravagance of his forefathers. "But the name and the blood
they can never touch," he would remark. They would not ask as to his
successor, because they valued him too highly, and because Mr. Morris
would never have admitted that the time had come when it was too late
to bring a bride home to the western halls of his forefathers. But
the rumour went that Minas Cottage would go in the female line to a
second cousin, who had married a cloth merchant in Galway city, to
whom nor to her husband did Mr. Morris ever speak. There might be
something absurd in this, but there was nothing injurious to his
neighbours, and nothing that would be likely to displease the poorer
of them.

But Mr. Morris had been made the subject of various requests from his
tenants. They had long since wanted and had received a considerable
abatement in their rent. Hence had come the straitened limits of L250
a year. They had then offered the "Griffith's valuation." To explain
the "Griffith's valuation" a chapter must be written, and as no
one would read the explanation if given here it shall be withheld.
Indeed, the whole circumstances of Mr. Morris's property were too
intricate to require, or to admit, elucidation here. He was so driven
that if he were to keep anything for himself he must do so by means
of the sheriff's officer, and hence it had come to pass that he had
been shot down like a mad dog by the roadside.

County Galway was tolerably well used to murders by this time, but
yet seemed to be specially astonished by the assassination of Mr.
Morris. The innocence of the man; for the dealings of the sheriff's
officer were hardly known beyond the town land which was concerned!
And then the taciturnity of the county side when the murder had been
effected! It was not such a deed as was the slaughtering of poor
Florian Jones, or the killing of Terry Carroll in the court h