Here was warmth, and wealth, and independence staring us in the face; there was negligence, desponding struggle, and decline, conscious, as it were, of their unseemly appearance, and anxious, one would think, to shrink away from the searching eye of observation.
"'But here again, Raymond; what have we here?
There is a fine looking farmhouse, evidently untenanted.

How is that ?' "'Ha, ha,' replied Raymond with a bitter smile, 'ha, ha! Let them take it, and see what Captain Whiteboy will do?
He has the possession--ha, ha--an' who'll get him to give it up?
Who dare take that, or any of Captain Whiteboy's farms?
But sure it's not, much--only a coal, a rushlight, and a prod of a pike or a baynet--but I know who ought to have them.' "The house in question was considerably dilapidated.

Its doors were not visible, and its windows had all been shivered.

Its smokeless chimneys, its cold and desolate appearance, together with the still more ruinous condition of the outhouses, added to the utter silence which prevailed about it, and the absence of every symptom of life and motion--all told a tale which has left many a bloody moral to the country.

The slaps, gates, and enclosures were down--the hedges broken or cut away--the fences trampled on and levelled to the earth--and nothing seemed to thrive--for the garden was overrun with them--but the rank weeds already alluded to, as those which love to trace the footsteps of ruin and desolation, in order to show, as it were, what they leave behind them.
As we advanced, other and more startling proofs of M'Clutchy came in our way--proofs which did not consist of ruined houses, desolate villages, or roofless-cottages--but of those unfortunate persons, whose simple circle of domestic life--whose little cares, and struggles, and sorrows, and affections, formed the whole round of their humble existence, and its enjoyments, as given them by Almighty God himself.