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Misther Blake was dhrivin' to church, at about eleven o'clock o' a foin summer's mornin'. His wife was wid him, an' Timothy Ruane was runnin' the horse a dacent boy was Tim, would do a hand's turn for anybody. The childer all swore by Tim, be raison he was the boy to give them half-pince for sweets and the like o' that.
Precise information is difficult to get, for while some decline to say a word, others are mutually contradictory, and a State Commission would hardly sift truth from the confusing mass of details, denials, assertions, and counter-assertions. This much is clear enough. A tenant named Ruane was required to leave a house, with ground, which he had held on the estate bought by Mr. Strachan.
Ruane went home also, breaking the locks, forcing the doors, reinstating himself and his furniture, planting his Lares and Penates in their old situations, hanging up his caubeen on the ancestral nail, and crossing his patriotic shin-bones on the familiar hearth.
He has offered Ruane five acres of land and a house, and Ruane would have accepted with thanks had he been allowed. But he went to a meeting in some outlying village, and received his orders from the Land League. For, be it observed, that the people of these parts speak of the Land League as existing in full force. Ruane declined the handsome offer of the kind-hearted Strachan.
Ruane will hold the house and land from which he has been evicted, because he had been evicted, and that the people may see that they have the mastery. Ruane would prefer the proffered land, but private interests must give way to the public weal.
There he is now, laughing at the Empire on which the sun never sets. When a certain bishop read "Paradise Lost" to a sporting lord, the impatient auditor's attention was arrested by some bold speech of Satan, whereupon he exclaimed "Dang me, if I don't back that chap. I like his pluck, and I hope he'll win." Something like this might be said of Ruane. And Ruane will stick to his land.
"The folks round 'ere," he said, "are hexactly like hus." He would have accorded higher praise, had he known any. Why this great difference? Look around the shop-keepers' signs in Tipperary or Tuam and note the names. Ruane, Magrath, Maguire, O'Doherty, O'Brien, O'Flanagan, O'Shaughnessy, and so in sæcula sæculorum. In Newry you see a striking change.
Pulled up for trespass, he declared that if sent to prison fifty times he would still return to the darling spot, and defied the British army and navy horse, foot, and artillery ironclads, marines, and 100-ton guns, to keep him out. For three acts of trespass he got three weeks imprisonment. The moment he was released Mr. Ruane walked back home, and took possession once again.
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