ere is
neither hen nor egg left on the premises. "And where is everything?" I
naturally ask.

"And the neighbours is good to me, sorr, and they reaped my oats for
me in a day, and carried 'um in a night. And my pitaties they dug for
me, and carried all clane away before the sheriff could come. And when
Mr. MacDonnell did come my wife was sick in bed, and the house was
full of people, and all he could do was to consult the doctor and go
away."

Now, as the basis for a burlesque or Christmas pantomime, in which the
Good Fairy warns the tenant to remove his crops lest the Demon
Landlord should seize upon them--the tenant being of course transmuted
into Harlequin and the landlord into Clown--this would be funny
enough; but it is difficult to see how the everyday business of life
could be carried on under such conditions. The case of Miss Gardiner
against Thomas Browne is one purely of hide and seek. When he owed two
years' rent he begged for time on account of two bad crops. When he
was threatened with eviction he begged time to get in his crop. It was
given to him. It is quite easy to understand that a tenant who has
been thirty years on a little holding thinks himself entitled to great
lenity, especially if his rent has been raised during that period,
and, as this man asserts, his "turbary" rights restricted, and every
kind of privilege reduced. But it has been said by a great literary
and social authority that there are such things as limits. Now this
man, Browne, feeling that he had an execution hanging over him,
contrived to temporise until his grain and potatoes were secured, and
then, aided by the accident of a sick wife, defied the law. The house
was full of people, a doctor said that the woman could not be removed,
and the sub-sheriff, backed by fifty policemen, could make nothing of
the business without incurring the odium of tearing a sick woman from
her bed. He offered the irreconcilable Browne the offer of accepting
the ejectment and remaining in the house as "caretaker," but the
tenant was staunch and would make no terms. The consequence is that
when Miss Gardiner again attempts to evict him she must incur the
considerable cost of a new writ. The condition of affairs now is that
a tenant owing three years' rent, and not having paid a shilling on
account, simply defies the landlord and remains in his wretched
holding, having possibly--for the Irish are an intelligent as well as
good-humoured people--the proc