Stewart, though he kept himself and his tenants in hot
water for a couple of years, wasn't a bad kind of gentleman, and now
that things have settled down is well-esteemed and liked in the
country. But when he came first he didn't understand the people nor
they him, and there's no doubt he did some hard things as much out of
pure ignorance, they say, as for any malice. He'd put his bit of money
in the estate and meant to have it out of it, and he didn't like at
all the easy-going ways he found there. The old Misses Conyers who
preceded him were of a very ancient stock, and would rather turn out
themselves than turn out a soul of their people. They had enough money
to keep them while they lived; and 'pay when you can,' or 'when you
like,' was the rule on the estate. Every man, woman and child was
Paddy and Biddy and Judy to them. Oh, sure it was a bad day for the
tenants when they went; and more betoken, they had laid up trouble
for the man that was to succeed them.

The people never gave Mr. Ramsay-Stewart a chance when he came. They
disliked him, and he was an upstart and a _gombeen_ man and a usurper,
and such foolishness, in the mouths of every one of them. As if it was
his fault, poor gentleman, that the Misses Conyers never married, and
so let Coolacreva fall to strangers.

Now there was a widow and her daughter, Mrs. Murphy and little Fanny,
that had a big patch of land on the estate, and the memory of man
couldn't tell when they'd paid a penny of rent for it. It was so
overgrown with weeds and thistles, and so strewn with big boulders,
that it was more like a boreen than decent fields. Well, it vexed Mr.
Ramsay-Stewart, who was accustomed to the tidy Scotch fields,
amazingly, and he got on his high horse that the widow should pay or
go.

She couldn't or wouldn't pay, and she wouldn't go. She never thought
the crow-bar brigade would be set on her cabin; but, sure, the new
landlord wasn't a man to stop short of his word, and one bleak, bitter
November day he was out with the police and bailiffs. Before the
League could put one foot before another the roof was off Mrs.
Murphy's cabin, the bits of furniture out in the road, and the pair of
women standing over them shaking their fists at the Scotchman, and
whimpering out the revenge they'd have, till Lanty Corcoran, a strong
farmer, took them home, and set them up snug and easy in one of his
outhouses.

Fanny was a pretty little girl, a golden-ringleted, blue-eyed