A BAEN. 89 



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, bill- 

 hook in hand, and there she sits the day through 



