“Well, will you let me bear you company, Katherine?” asked he. As the girl repeated the question, the old fellow gave a half impatient shrug of the shoulders, and uttered a few sentences in Irish with a voluble energy that savoured of passion.
“‘Tis what he says, Sir,” said the child; “that he was in trouble once before, and found it hard enough to get out of it, and if misfortune was to come to you, that he’d be blamed for it.”
“So, then, he’d rather have nothing to do with me,” said Vyner, smiling. “What does he mean by trouble?”
The old man looked up full in his face, and his eyes took an almost defiant expression as he said, “Isn’t the assizes trouble?—isn’t it trouble to be four months in gaol waiting for them?—isn’t it trouble to stand up in the dock, with two sons of your own, and be tried for your life?”
“Yes, that indeed may be called trouble,” said Vyner, compassionately, as he sat down on the bank and took out a cigar. “Do you smoke? Will you have one of these?”
The old man looked at the cigar and shook his head; either he did not value, or did not understand it.
“That’s the reason I come up here,” resumed the peasant. “I’m a Mayo man, and so is all belongin’ to me, but after that”—he laid an emphasis on the last word—“the landlord, ould Tom Luttrell, wouldn’t renew my lease, and so I come up to this wild place, where, praise be to the Virgin, there’s no leases nor landlords either.” “How does that happen? The land surely has an owner?” “If it has, I never saw him, nor you neither. And whoever he is, he knows better than to come here and ax for his rents.” The bitter laugh with which the old fellow finished his speech was scarcely short of an insult—indeed, Vyner half winced as he felt that it might have been meant as a menace to himself. “No,” continued he, as though following out the flow of his own thoughts; “there’s the Gap of Inchegora before us, and through that Gap tithe-proctor, agent, or bailiff, never passed, and if they did, they’d never pass back again!”
“And who is supposed to own these lands?” asked Vyner, mildly. “The College of Dublin has some of them; Lord Landsborough has more; John Luttrell of Arran says that there’s part of them his; and, for the matter of that, I might say that the mountain there was mine—and who’s to contradict me?—or what better am I after saying it?”
Pouring out a cupful of brandy from his flask, Vyner offered it to him, and this he took with gratitude, his eyes devouring with admiration the little silver goblet that held it.
“Drink Mr. Luttrell’s health,” said Vyner, pouring out the last of the liquor into the cup; “he was an old friend of mine long ago.”