Like many others of the men who are employed on the farms about town he
came originally from a little village a hundred miles away, in the heart
of the country. The stamp of the land is on him, too.

Besides the Irish, who pass in gangs and generally have a settled
destination, many agricultural folk drift along the roads and lanes
searching for work. They are sometimes alone, or in couples, or they are
a man and his wife, and carry hoes. You can tell them as far as you can
see them, for they stop and look over every gateway to note how the crop
is progressing, and whether any labour is required.

On Saturday afternoons, among the crowd of customers at the shops in the
towns, under the very shadow of the almost palatial villas of wealthy
"City" men, there may be seen women whose dress and talk at once mark
them out as agricultural. They have come in on foot from distant farms
for a supply of goods, and will return heavily laden. No town-bred
woman, however poor, would dress so plainly as these cottage matrons.
Their daughters who go with them have caught the finery of the town, and
they do not mean to stay in the cottage.

There is a bleak arable field, on somewhat elevated ground, not very far
from the same old barn. In the corner of this field for the last two or
three years a great pit of roots has been made: that is, the roots are
piled together and covered with straw and earth. When this mound is
opened in the early spring a stout, elderly woman takes her seat beside
it, billhook in hand, and there she sits the day through trimming the
roots one by one, and casting those that she has prepared aside ready to
be carted away to the cattle.

A hurdle or two propped up with stakes, and against which some of the