he
instinctive feeling that the rule of the landlord was now fixed more
tightly than ever, and that emancipation was postponed to a day beyond
that of the present generation.

The landlords appreciated the situation with the same instinctive
readiness and perception. At once the pause which had come in the work
of eviction was broken, the plague raged immediately with a fierceness
that seemed to have gained more hellish energy and more devilish cruelty
from its temporary abatement. The roads were thick with troops of people
rushing wildly from their homes and fleeing from their native country as
from a land cursed alike by God and by man. Mat Blake, passing along
from Dublin to Ballybay, was almost driven to insanity by the sights he
saw at the different sections along the way.

Every station was besieged by vast crowds of the emigrants and their
friends. There are few sights so touching as the sight of the parting of
Irish families at a railway station. The ties of family are closer and
more affectionate than anybody can appreciate who has not lived the life
of an Irish home. The children grow up in a dependence on their parents
that may well seem slavery to other peoples. The grown son is still the
"boy" years after he has attained manhood's years, the daughter remains
a little girl, whom her mother has the right to chide and direct and
control in every action. Such ties beget helplessness as well as
affection, and the Irish peasant still regards many things as worse than
death, which, by peoples of less ardent religious faith, are regarded
more philosophically.

When Mat looked at the simple faces of those poor girls, at the
bewildered look in the countenances of the young men, and thought of
how ignorant and helpless these people were, he could understand the
almost insane anguish of their parents as they saw them embark on an
ocean so dark and tempestuous and remote as the crowded cities of
America, and Mat could penetrate down into the minds of his people and
see with the lightning flash of sympathy the dread spectre that tortured
the minds, filled the eyes, and darkened the brows of the Irish parents.

Station after station, it was always the same sight. The parting
relatives were locked in each other's arms; they wept and cried aloud,
and swayed in their grief.

"Cheer up, father; God is good."

"Ah, Paddie, my darlint, I'll never see ye agin."

"Oh mother, dear, don't fret."

"May God and His Blessed