"Great trouble I got, Mrs. Knox, your honour ma'am," replied Casey from the door-mat, "great trouble entirely." He came a step or two nearer. He had a long, clean-shaved face, with mournful eyes, like a sick bloodhound, and the enviable, countryman's thatch of thick, strong hair, with scarcely a touch of grey in it.
"That Goggin, that has the shop at Killoge Cross, has me processed. I'm pairsecuted with him; and the few little bastes I has, and me donkey and all—" his voice thinned to a whimper, "he's to drive them to-morrow——"
"I suppose that's Goggin, the Gombeen?" said Mrs. Knox; "how were you fool enough to get into dealings with him?"
The statement of Casey's wrongs occupied quite ten minutes, and was generous in detail. His land was bad, ever and always. The grass that was in it was as bare as that you could pick pins in it. He had no pushing land at all for cattle. Didn't he buy a heifer at Scabawn fair and the praisings she got was beyant all raves, and he had her one month, and kinder company he never had, and she giving seven pints at every meal, and wasn't that the divil's own produce? One month, indeed, was all he had her till she got a dropsy, and the dropsy supported her for a while, and when it left her she faded away. And didn't his wife lose all her hens in one week? "They fell dead on her, like hailstones!" He ceased, and a tear wandered down the channels in his long cheek.
"How much do you owe Goggin?" asked Mrs. Knox sharply.
What Casey owed to Goggin had, as might have been expected, but a remote relation to the sum that Goggin was now endeavouring to extract from Casey. At the heart of the transaction was a shop account, complicated by loans of single pounds (and in my mind's eye I could see, and with my mind's nose I could smell, the dirty crumpled notes). It was further entangled by per-contra accounts of cribs of turf, scores of eggs, and a day's work now and again. I had, from the judgment seat, listened to many such recitals, so, apparently, had Mrs. Knox, judging by the ease with which she straightened Casey's devious narrative at critical points, and shepherded him to his facts, like a cunning old collie steering a sheep to its pen. The conclusion of the matter was that Goggin was, on the morrow, to take possession of Casey's remaining stock, consisting of three calves, a donkey, and a couple of goats, in liquidation of a debt of £15, and that he, Stephen Casey, knew that Mrs. Knox would never be satisfied to see one of her own tenants wronged.
"I have no tenants," replied Mrs. Knox tartly; "the Government is your landlord now, and I wish you joy of each other!"
"Then I wish to God it was yourself we had in it again!" lamented Stephen Casey; "it was better for us when the gentry was managing their own business. They'd give patience, and they'd have patience."
"Well, that will do now," said Mrs. Knox; "go round to the servants' hall and have your tea. I'll see what I can do."
There was silence while Stephen Casey withdrew. As the sound of his hobnailed tread died away the woolly dog advanced very stiffly to the hall door, and, with his eyes fixed on the departing visitor, licked his lips hungrily.