Her eye dim, and her strength gone--Sir,
make one such family happy--for all this has been in my father's house!
Give us back our light spirits, our pleasant days, and our cheerful
hearts again! We lost them through the villainy of your agent. Give
them back to us, for you can do it; but you can never pay us for what we
suffered. Give us, sir, our farm, our green fields, our house, and every
spot and nook that we had before. We love the place, sir, for its own
sake;--it is the place of our fathers, and our hearts are in it. I often
think I see the smooth river that runs through it, and the meadows
that I played in when I was a child;--the glen behind our house, the
mountains that rose before us when we left the door, the thorn-bush at
the garden, the hazels in the glen, the little beach-green beside the
river--Oh, sir, don't blame me for crying, for they are all before my
eyes, in my ears, and in my heart! Many a summer evening have I gone to
the march-ditch of the farm that my father's now in, and looked at the
place I loved, till the tears blinded me, and I asked it as a favor of
God to restore us to it! Sir, we are in great poverty at home; before
God we are; and my father's heart is breaking."
The Colonel drew his breath deeply, rubbed his hands, and as he looked
at the fine countenance of the boy--expressing, as it did, enthusiasm
and sorrow--his eye lightened with a gleam of indignation. It could
not be against the poor scholar; no, gentle reader, but against his own
agent.
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