It Was Hard Enough To Wander
Through The Ruins And Hear Of The Eviction Scenes From Others, But To
Sit By The Turf Fire And Listen To One Who Had Suffered And Was
Suffering From This Dreadful Act, To See The Recollection Of It
Expressed In Look And Tone Was Different.
This woman - husband dead, son
in the asylum - was a decent-looking body in cloak and cap, with a
bleached face and quiet voice.
"We were all under sentence of eviction, but it was told to us that it
was for squaring the farms. Then we were warned to pay in the half-
year's rent. It was not due till May, and we had never been asked to pay
the rent ahead of us before. But the landlord was a new one, and if he
made a rule, why, we must obey him; so we scraped up and sold this and
that and paid it. If we had known what was coming we might have kept it,
and had a penny to turn to when we were out under the sky. It was to get
the rent before he turned us out that he made that plan. We were put out
in the beginning of April; our rent was paid up to May. Oh, I wish, I
wish that he had driven us into the lake the day he put us out. A few
minutes would have ended our trouble, but now when will it end! I have
been through the country, my lady, and my boy in the asylum ever since."
Went to the Catholic chapel up here in the mountains.
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