asant to the eye,
but which now in these days--days that were so decidedly bad, was
anything but pleasant. It was one of those tracts of land which had
been divided and subdivided among the cottiers till the fields had
dwindled down to parts of acres, each surrounded by rude low banks,
which of themselves seemed to occupy a quarter of the surface of the
land. The original landmarks, the big earthen banks,--banks so large
that a horse might walk on the top of them,--were still visible
enough, showing to the practised eye what had once been the fields
into which the land had been divided; but these had since been
bisected and crossected, and intersected by family arrangements,
in which brothers had been jealous of brothers, and fathers of
their children, till each little lot contained but a rood or two of
available surface.

This had been miserable enough to look at, even when those roods had
been cropped with potatoes or oats; but now they were not cropped at
all, nor was there preparation being made for cropping them. They had
been let out under the con-acre system, at so much a rood, for the
potato season, at rents amounting sometimes to ten or twelve pounds
the acre; but nobody would take them now. There, in that electoral
division, the whole proceeds of such land would hardly have paid the
poor rates, and therefore the land was left uncultivated.

The winter was over, for it was now April, and had any tillage been
intended, it would have been commenced--even in Ireland. It was the
beginning of April, but the weather was still stormy and cold, and
the east wind, which, as a rule, strikes Ireland with but a light
hand, was blowing sharply. On a sudden a squall of rain came on,--one
of those spring squalls which are so piercingly cold, but which are
sure to pass by rapidly, if the wayfarer will have patience to wait
for them. Herbert, remembering his former discomfiture, resolved that
he would have such patience, and dismounting from his horse at a
cabin on the road-side, entered it himself, and led his horse in
after him. In England no one would think of taking his steed into a
poor man's cottage, and would hardly put his beast into a cottager's
shed without leave asked and granted; but people are more intimate
with each other, and take greater liberties in Ireland. It is
no uncommon thing on a wet hunting-day to see a cabin packed
with horses, and the children moving about among them, almost as
unconcernedly as tho