nt by him
of the costs of the proceedings forced upon him by his tenant. "You have
had a good holding," said the agent, "with plenty of water and good
land. In this current year two acres of your wheat will pay the whole
rent. You have broken up and sold bit by bit a mill that was on the
place; and above all, when Mr. Gladstone made us accept the judicial
rents, he told us we might be sure, if we did this, of punctual payment.
That was the one consideration held out to us. And we are entitled to
that!"

The tenant being out of his holding, the agent wishes to put another
tenant into it. But the holding is "boycotted." Several tenants are
anxious for it, and would gladly take it, but they dare not The great
evicted will neither sell any tenant-right he may have, nor pay his
arrears and costs, nor give up the place to another tenant. To put
Property Defence men on the holding would cost the landlord L2, 10s. a
week, and do him no great good, as the evicted man "holds the fort,"
being established in a house which he occupies on an adjoining property,
and for which presumably he pays his rent. It seems as if Mr. Sweeney
were inspired by the example of another tenant, named Barry, who, before
the passing of the Land Act of 1881, gave up freely a holding of 20
acres, on a property managed by Mr. Kough; but as he was on such good
terms with the agent that he could borrow money of him, he begged the
agent to let him retain at a low rent a piece of this surrendered land
directly adjoining his house. He asked this in the name of his eight or
nine children, and it was granted him. The agent afterwards found that
the piece of land in question was by far the best of the surrendered
holding. But that is a mere detail. This ingenious tenant Barry, living
now on another estate just outside the grasp of the agent, has
systematically "boycotted" for the last nine years the land which he
gave up, feeding his own cattle upon it freely meanwhile, and keeping
all would-be tenants at a distance! "He is now," said the agent, "quite
a wealthy man in his way, jobbing cattle at all the great markets!"

"When the eviction of Sweeney took place," said the agent, "I was
present in person, as I thought I ought to be, and the result is that I
have been held up to the execration of mankind as a monster for putting
out a child in a cradle into a storm. As a matter of fact," he said,
"there was a cradle in the way, which the sheriff-Officer gently took