n, the last of them now; and may I never leave this
bed, if I could make a barony constable in the county where the king's
writ could n't run once without our leave."

"But Ireland herself has changed more than your own fortunes," remarked
Grounsell.

"That's true, that 's true," sighed the sick man. "I don't remember the
best days of it, but I 've heard of them often and often from my father.
The fine old times, when Mount Dalton was filled with company from the
ground to the slates, and two lords in the granary; a pipe of port wine
in the hall, with a silver cup beside it; the Modereen hounds, huntsmen
and all, living at rack and manger, as many as fifty sitting down in
the parlor, and I won't say how many in the servants' hall; the finest
hunters in the west country in the stables, there was life for you! Show
me the equal of that in the wide world."

"And what is the present condition of the scene of those festivities?"
said Grounsell, with a calm but searching look.

"The present condition?" echoed Dalton, starting up to a sitting
posture, and grasping the curtain with a convulsive grip; "I can't tell
you what it is to-day, this ninth of November, but I 'll tell what it
was when I left it, eighteen years ago. The house was a ruin; the lawn
a common; the timber cut down; the garden a waste; the tenants beggared;
the landlord an exile. That 's a pleasant catalogue, is n't it?"

"But there must come a remedy for all this," remarked Grounsell, whose
ideas were following out a very different channel.

"Do you mean by a poor-law? Is it by taxing the half ruined to feed the
lazy? or by rooting out all that once was a gentry, to fill their places
by greedy speculators from Manchester and Leeds? Is that your remedy?
It 's wishing it well I am! No; if you want to do good to the country,
leave Ireland to be Ireland, and don't try to make Norfolk of her. Let
her have her own Parliament, that knows the people and their wants.
Teach her to have a pride in her own nationality, and not to be always
looking at herself in shame beside her rich sister. Give her a word of
kindness now and then, as you do the Scotch; but, above all, leave us to
ourselves. We understand one another; you never did, nor never will. We
quarrelled, and made friends again, and all went right with us; you
came over with your Chancery Courts, and your police, and whenever we
differed, you never stopped till we were beggared or hanged."

"You take a very