land, and laboured there for a spell; and then they would work for a
spell, as men do in England, taking wages; and then they would be
idle for a spell. It was not exactly a profitable mode of life, but
it had its comforts; and now these unfortunates who felt themselves
to be driven forth like cattle in droves for the first time,
suffered the full wretchedness of their position. They were not
rough and unruly, or inclined to be troublesome and perhaps violent,
as men similarly circumstanced so often are in England;--as Irishmen
are when collected in gangs out of Ireland. They had no aptitudes
for such roughness, and no spirits for such violence. But they were
melancholy, given to complaint, apathetic, and utterly without
interest in that they were doing.

"Yz, yer honer," said one man who was standing, shaking himself,
with his hands enveloped in the rags of his pockets. He had on no
coat, and the keen north wind seemed to be blowing through his
bones; cold, however, as he was, he would do nothing towards warming
himself, unless that occasional shake can be considered as a doing
of something. "Yz, yer honer; we've begun thin since before daylight
this blessed morning."

It was now eleven o'clock, and a pick-axe had not been put into the
ground, nor the work marked.

"Been here before daylight!" said Herbert. "And has there been
nobody to set you to work?"

"Divil a sowl, yer honer," said another, who was sitting on a
hedge-bank leaning with both his hands on a hoe, which he held
between his legs, "barring Thady Molloy and Shawn Brady; they two do