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To exasperate the poor Catholic still more, the rich graziers of the parish, or the squire in his parish, pay no tithe at all for their grass land. Agistment tithe is abolished in Ireland, and the burthen of supporting two Churches seems to devolve upon the poorer Catholics, struggling with plough and spade in small scraps of dearly-rented land.
I wonder whether I shall be permitted to communicate with my ward. I walk towards him, and Captain Spade and Engineer Serko watch me. Thomas Roch doesn't see me coming, and I stand beside him. Still he takes no notice of me, and makes no movement. His eyes, which sparkle brightly, wander over the ocean, and he draws in deep breaths of the salt, vivifying atmosphere.
I was let down into a big hole, the early parent of shaft-sinking, given a spade, and directed to apply it to a place where a digger's quick eye had detected one speck of gold. There was probably, he said, a string of gold behind it. And so it proved, for out of about a pound weight of matrix which I removed on the corner of the spade, I picked out 7 shillings and 6 pence worth of gold.
Now and then a spade made an opening for the gases to escape and the nauseated men were driven back. For all that, they filled the skip and the swinging derrick carried the load across the deck and tilted it overboard. The heat was almost unbearable, the reflections from the oily swell and wet deck hurt one's eyes, and Lister noted that the deck did not dry until the sea breeze began to blow.
Truly, this fair-seeming and wonderful civilisation was like the floor of a charnel-house or a field of battle; anywhere one drove a spade beneath its surface, he uncovered horrors, sights for the eyes and stenches for the nostrils that caused him to turn sick! There was Rusick, for example; he had a wife and two children, and not a dollar in the world.
In the library, however, hangs an etching which you often look at; in fact, you never pass it without noticing it. Two figures, a wheelbarrow, a spade, a stretch of country, a spire pencilled against a low-tone sky; and yet, somehow, you hear the tolling of the bell and the whispered prayer. Ah! but you say this has nothing to do with the treatment; it is the subject. One moment.
The excessive hardness of the wood, and my having no other way, made me a long while upon this machine; for I worked it effectually, by little and little, into the form of a shovel or spade; the handle exactly shaped like ours in England, only that the broad part having no iron shod upon it at bottom, it would not last me so long: however, it served well enough for the uses which I had occasion to put it to; but never was a shovel, I believe, made after that fashion, or so long a-making.
They were both experienced in such affairs, and powerful with the spade; and they had scarce been twenty minutes at their task before they were rewarded by a dull rattle on the coffin lid. At the same moment, Macfarlane, having hurt his hand upon a stone, flung it carelessly above his head.
He struck the horse lightly, and they passed on while the little funeral cortege went slowly to the burial place for the poor and unknown dead. It was a simple, and somewhat dreary place, which they reached at last. There were no cared-for flowers blossoming there, and the grass grew uncut around the nameless graves. The old man with his spade had just finished his work.
Then there was only Andrew to be seen in the distance, bending over his barrow or rake or spade; but he never looked up to the nursery window, and this was not surprising, for Andrew had a great deal to do. He worked in the garden, and fed the chickens, and took care of Ruby the horse, and sometimes drove the wagonette into Nearminster; he also rang the church bell, and was parish clerk.
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