This was a state of things which Mr.Travers wished to abolish, but to do so, without inflicting injury, however unintentional, or occasioning harshness to the people, was a matter not merely difficult but impossible.

As we are not, however, writing a treatise upon the management of property, we shall confine ourselves simply to the circumstances only of such of the tenants as have enacted a part in our narrative.
About a week had now elapsed since the abusive contest between Jemmy Branigan and the pedlar; the coroner was beginning to recover, and Charley Hanlon's aunt had disappeared altogether from the neighborhood.
Previous to her departure, however, she, her nephew, and the pedlar, had several close, and apparently interesting conferences, into which their parish priest, the Rev.Anthony Devlin, was ultimately admitted.

It was clear, indeed, that whatever secret the pedlar communicated, had inspired both Hanlon and his aunt with fresh energy in their attempts to discover the murderer of their relative; and there could be little doubt that the woman's disappearance from the scene of its perpetration was in some way connected with the steps they were taking to bring everything connected with it to light.
Travers, already acquainted with the committal of old Dalton, as he was with all the circumstances of his decline and eviction from his farm, was sitting in his office, about twelve o'clock, when our friend, the pedlar, bearing a folded paper in his hand, presented himself, with a request that he might be favored with a private interview.

This, without any difficulty, was granted, and the following dialogue took place between them:-- "Well, my good friend," said the agent; "what is the nature of this private business of yours ?" "Why, plase your honor, it's a petition in favor of ould Condy Dalton." "A petition! Of what use is a petition to Dalton?
Is he not now in gaol, on a charge of murder?
You would not have me attempt to obstruct the course of justice, would you?
The man will get a fair trial, I hope." "I hope so, your honor; but this petition is not about the crime the unfortunate man is in for; it's an humble prayer to your honor, hopin' you might restore him--or, I ought rather to say, his poor family, to the farm that they wor so cruelly put out of.

Will your honor read it, sir, and look into it, bekaise, at any rate, it sets forth too common a case." "I am partly acquainted with the circumstances, already; however, let me see the paper." "The pedlar placed it in Mr.Travers' hands,--who on looking over it, read, somewhat to his astonishment, as follows:-- "The humble petition of Cornelius Dalton, to his Honor, Mr.John Robert Travers, Esq., on behalf of himself, his Wife, and his afflicted family; now lying in a state of almost superhuman Destitution--by Eugenius M'Grane, Philomath and classical Instructor in the learned Languages of Latin, English, and the Hibernian Vernacular, with an inceptive Initiation into the Rudiments of Greek, as far as the Gospel of St.John the Divine; attended with copious Disquisitions on the relative Merits of moral and physical Philosophy, as contrasted with the pusillanimous Lectures of that Ignoramus of the first Water, Phadrick M'Swagger, falsely calling himself Philomath--_cum multis aliis quos enumerare longum est_: "Humbly Sheweth-- "That Cornelius Dalton, late of Cargah, gentleman agriculturist, held a farm of sixty-six Irish acres, under the Right Honorable (the reverse could be proved with sound and legitimate logic) Lord Mollyborough, an absentee nobleman, and proprietor of the Tullystretchem estate.