The law of the league is the law of the west of Ireland. King Edward does not reign there in the least.
"Come down here," cried Mr. French one morning, standing in the hall and calling up the stairs, where he had caught the flutter of Miss Grimshaw's skirt. "Come down here till I show you something you've never seen before. Come in here."
He led the way into a small room, where he received farmers and tenants, and there, sitting on a chair, was an old man with a face furrowed like a ploughed field. His battered old hat was on the floor, and he held in his hand two cows' tails, and there he sat, purblind, and twisting the tails in his hands, a living picture of age and poverty and affliction.
"Don't get up, Ryan. Sit you down where you are," said French, "and tell the young lady what you have in your hands."
"Sure, they're me cows' tails," piped the old fellow, like a child saying a lesson. "Me beautiful cows' tails, that the blackguards chopped off wid a knife—divil mend them!—and I lyin' in bed in the grey of the marnin'. 'Listen,' I says to me wife. 'What ails the crathurs and they boohooin' like that?' 'Get up an' see,' she says. And up I gets, and slips on me breeches and coat, and out I goes, and finds thim hangin' over the rail, dhrippin' wid blood, and they cut off wid a knife. Oh, the blackguards, to chop their knives into the poor innocent crathurs, and lave me widout a cow, and the rint comin' due, and me wife sick in her bed, and all. Sure, what way is that to be thratin' a man just bekase I niver answered their divil's notice to quit?"
"Cut off his cows' tails?" cried the girl in horror. "Were they alive?"
"Yes," said French. "It's little those ruffians care for an animal—or a man either."
"Oh, but what a cruel, sneaking thing to do! Why did they do it?"
"Because he would not give up his bit of a farm. And they call themselves Irishmen; and the worst of the business is, they are. Well, Ryan, keep your seat, and I'll send you in a drop of whisky. And don't bother about the rent—I expect the next thing will be they'll visit me. Faith, and they'll get a warm reception if they do!"
Mr. French left the room, followed by the girl. "That's the sort of thing that's been the ruin of Ireland," said he, as he pulled the sitting-room bell for Norah. "Talk of landlords! Good heavens! when was there ever a landlord would cut a cow's tail off? When was there ever a landlord would mutilate horses? Did ye ever hear of a landlord firing a gun through the window of a house where a lonely old woman was and nearly blow the roof off her skull, all because her son refused to 'strip his farm,' as they call it? And that was done ten miles from here a month before you came. Norah, get the whisky and give old Ryan a glassful and a bite to eat. He's sitting in there in the little study, with his two cow's tails, those blackguards have cut off, in his hand. Take him into the kitchen and dry him, and let him sit by the fire; and tell Mrs. Driscoll to give him something for his old wife, for she's sick in bed.