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fellow. Now all that is changed; if a man drinks at all, he will be likely to conceal his fault. The long campaign against intemperance in Ireland, inaugurated by Father Matthew in the forties, is responsible for this. The talk of the peasants at that table was mostly of their own surprising security. Old Patrick told us that, thirty years ago, he heard a priest say that the time would come when their hardships under the landlords would be told as a story round the fire—a story to startle the children. He never thought he would see the day when they would be clear of the menace of landlordism. The old men became impassioned upon this topic, and we, who had some dim memory of the eighties, realised that the security behind this modest comfort was indeed remarkable. A clean cloth was spread upon the table, the peasants were well-clothed, the room was fairly furnished. In the old days, if a landlord, or a landlord's hanger-on, saw such a display, the rent would have been raised on the Markeys'. Farral Markey gave us the motto with which his old landlord justified his exactions, "The higher you load your horse, the tighter he will draw."

The breakfast for the women was being prepared when we went into the kitchen. A boy was reading the prophecies out of Old Moore's Almanac. "September: a great war threatens Europe. The Austrian Empire, long a foe to the Infidel, is threatened with wars and dissensions. . . . October: unhappy France finds too late the evils consequent upon her infidelity. . . . England will soon have cause to repent of her alliance with a Pagan Power."