M'Evoy's case had occurred more than ten years before, but he found
that the remembrance of the poor man's injury was strongly and bitterly
retained in the recollections of the people--a circumstance which
extorted from the blunt, but somewhat sentimental soldier, a just
observation:--"I think," said he, "that there are no people in the world
who remember either an injury or a kindness so long as the Irish."
When the tenants were apprised of his presence among them, they
experienced no particular feeling upon the subject. During all his
former visits to his estate, he appeared merely the creature and puppet
of his agent, who never acted the bully, nor tricked himself out in his
brief authority more imperiously than he did before him. The knowledge
of this damped them, and rendered any expectations of redress or justice
from the landlord a matter not to be thought of.
"If he wasn't so great a man," they observed, "who thinks it below him
to speak to his tenants, or hear their complaints, there 'ud be some
hope. But that rip of hell, Yallow Sam, can wind him round his finger
like a thread, an' does, too. There's no use in thinkin' to petition
him, or to lodge a complaint against Stony Heart, for the first thing
he'd do 'ud be to put it into the yallow-boy's hands, an' thin, God be
marciful to thim that 'ud complain. No, no; the best way is to wait till
Sam's _masther_* takes him; an' who knows but that 'ud be sooner nor we
think."
* The devil;--a familiar name for him when mentioned in
connection with a villain.
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