were a set of poor wretches, and we had nothing but misfortunes with
them, always breaking and running away. This, Sir Murtagh and my lady
said, was all their former landlord Sir Patrick's fault, who let 'em all
get the half year's rent into arrear; there was something in that to be
sure. But Sir Murtagh was as much the contrary way; for let alone making
English tenants[G] of them, every soul, he was always driving and
driving, and pounding and pounding, and canting[H] and canting, and
replevying and replevying, and he made a good living of trespassing
cattle; there was always some tenant's pig, or horse, or cow, or calf,
or goose, trespassing, which was so great a gain to Sir Murtagh, that he
did not like to hear me talk of repairing fences. Then his heriots and
duty-work[I] brought him in something, his turf was cut, his potatoes
set and dug, his hay brought home, and, in short, all the work about his
house done for nothing; for in all our leases there were strict clauses
heavy with penalties, which Sir Murtagh knew well how to enforce; so
many days' duty work of man and horse, from every tenant, he was to
have, and had, every year; and when a man vexed him, why the finest day
he could pitch on, when the cratur was getting in his own harvest, or
thatching his cabin, Sir Murtagh made it a principle to call upon him
and his horse; so he taught 'em all, as he said, to know the law of
landlord and tenant. As for law, I believe no man, dead or alive, ever
loved it so well as Sir Murtagh. He had once sixteen suits pending at a
time, and I never saw him so much himself; roads, lanes, bogs, wells,
ponds, eel-wires, orchards, trees, tithes, vagrants, gravelpits,
sandpits, dunghills, and nuisances, every thing upon the face of the
earth furnished him good matter for a suit. He used to boast that he had
a lawsuit for every letter in the alphabet. How I used to wonder to see
Sir Murtagh in the midst of the papers in his office! Why he could
hardly turn about for them. I made bold to shrug my shoulders once in
his presence, and thanked my stars I was not born a gentleman to so much