“Then this is notice for you to come up to Mr. Lucas's office in Galway before the twenty-fifth, with your rent, or the receipt for it, which ever you like best.”
“And who is Mr. Lucas when he's at home?” said Owen, half-sneeringly.
“You'll know him when you see him,” rejoined the other, turning to leave the cabin, as he threw a printed paper on the dresser; and then, as if thinking he had not been formal enough in his mission, added, “Mr. Lucas is agent to your landlord, Mr. Leslie; and I'll give you a bit of advice, keep a civil tongue in your head with him, and it will do you no harm.”
This counsel, delivered much more in a tone of menace than of friendly advice, concluded the interview, for having spoken, the fellow left the cabin, and began to descend the mountain.
Owen's heart swelled fiercely—a flood of conflicting emotions were warring within it; and as he turned to throw the paper into the fire, his eye caught the date, 16th March. “St. Patrick's Eve, the very day I saved his life,” said he, bitterly. “Sure I knew well enough how it would be when the landlord died! Well, well, if my poor ould father doesn't know it, it's no matter.—Well, Patsy, acushla, what are ye crying for? There, my boy, don't be afeard, 'tis Nony's with ye.”
The accents so kindly uttered quieted the little fellow in a moment, and in a few minutes after he was again asleep in the old straw chair beside the fire. Brief as Owen's absence had been, the old man seemed much worse as he entered the room. “God forgive me, Owen darling,” said he, “but it wasn't my poor sowl I was thinking of that minit. I was thinking that you must get a letter wrote to the young landlord about this little place—I'm sure he'll never say a word about rent, no more nor his father; and as the times wasn't good lately—”
“There, there, father,” interrupted Owen, who felt shocked at the old man's not turning his thoughts in another direction; “never mind those things,” said he; “who knows which of us will be left? the sickness doesn't spare the young, no more than the ould.”
“Nor the rich, no more nor the poor,” chimed in the old man, with a kind of bitter satisfaction, as he thought on the landlord's death; for of such incongruous motives is man made up, that calamities come lighter when they involve the fall of those in station above our own. “'Tis a fine day, seemingly,” said he, suddenly changing the current of his thoughts; “and elegant weather for the country; we'll have to turn in the sheep over that wheat; it will be too rank: ayeh,” cried he, with a deep sigh, “I'll not be here to see it;” and for once, the emotions, no dread of futurity could awaken, were realised by worldly considerations, and the old man wept like a child.
“What time of the month is it?” asked he, after a long interval in which neither spoke; for Owen was not really sorry that even thus painfully the old man's thoughts should be turned towards eternity.
“'Tis the seventeenth, father, a holy-day all over Ireland!”