ROBERT CORSCADDEN was an Ulster farmer who owned the farm that he strove to live by. There were thirty acres of it, cold sour land, and a third part of the whole barren moor. The screen of trees which Robert had raised about the row of buildings-double cottage, byre, barn, and stable grew starved and twisted, yet there was a shelter in the homestead for folk and beasts. The beasts, for they were part of the farm, were well fed there, the folk were underfed. Yet the human beings, hardiest of animals, lived, if they did not thrive; the beasts died sometimes. Then the pinch would come.

A year before this Robert lost two cows, and after that, worse than all, the stout mare that had stood well to him since he reared her. Another horse had to be bought; the instalments of purchase-money due to Government must be paid punctually in hard cash; and, as the least ruinous way to raise it, young Johnny, a boy now man- big, who had wrought beside his father for seven or eight years, was sent to the labour in Scotland. The money was earned, the boy came back, decent, quiet, industrious, but changed. That was how trouble began.

One cold sunless morning in May, Robert and his son stood outside the door, coming out

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from their mid-day meal of tea and potatoes, and preparing to go back to weeding in the drills. They were looking at three men who tramped along the road from which a short cart - track led, through waste moor, to the house. Each man carried a bundle and was dressed in dark clothes.

"Yon will be some of the Glendoe fellows," said Johnny, who watched them with a curious eagerness.

"Ay," his father answered, "they're early off. They're easy spared from the kind of farms they have in the low country."

Johnny did not notice the farmer's contemptuous reference to the patches of ground on which migratory labourers make their dwelling.

"Work should be plenty in Scotland the year, when them ones is going now," he said.

As he spoke, he pulled a pipe from his pocket and began to fill it.

His father spoke roughly. "What matter about Scotland? That's a trick you got there, any way. Why must you be for ever with a pipe in your mouth?"

"I can't be wanting it," the boy answered sullenly.

"You can't be wanting it! An' how do I do, then? I have no patience with you, wasting good money on the dirty stuff.'

Johnny took the pipe out of

into the house.

an

Manners are curt in Ulster; Annie Corscadden was active bustling woman, and, without more words, she handed him the key of the chest in which were kept all the household's less often used possessions. When she came back, after a quarter of an hour spent in byre and pigstye, she found Johnny dressed in his Sunday clothes, tying up a bundle in a red and green handkerchief.

"Save us, Johnny, what are you doing with them on you?" she said.

The boy did not turn his face to her. "I'm for Scotland," he answered.

Annie put down suddenly the bucket which she carried, and caught her hand to her breast. Then she recovered herself.

She ran over to him and tried to snatch away the bundle. But the boy thrust her aside, and, knotting the ends of the handkerchief, he lifted it in his hand.

"Quit talking," he said. "I'm for Scotland this day."

"And did you tell Robert this?" she asked, her voice still pitched to scolding.

"Never mind Robert," the boy answered, sullen as a snarling dog.

Quickly Annie's tone changed. "Sure, I know all about it now. You and your father had some fall-out. Ah, be sensible now, Johnny. You wouldn't do the like of that to ask to go away and leave us with the throng time coming. Who's to help Robert? Sure you know old John can't do a hand's turn."

"How did he do before? Didn't you send me to Scotland the other time? And didn't I send back the money I earned?"

Johnny's eyes were flaming, and stubborn lines showed about his mouth. His mother's face was written over with a conflict of feelings. Unable to command, unable to let him go, she tried persuasion, yet with little confidence.

"You did so, Johnny," she said. "No boy could do more than you did, when we asked you. But why would you go now, and vex us?"

"It's because I'm a man there and I'm a slave here, and that's the long and the short

of it," he broke out. did I see the colour of money here, and me slaving late and early? You see them clothes on me that I got in Scotland; they're all the thing I ever bought myself, and they're all the thing I ever had of my own. I was never proud till the first day I put them on. Ach, mother, Robert's a hard master to me."

"He's no harder on you nor he is on himself," the mother answered, with a touch of anger. "What does poor Robert grudge you that he ever got for himself?

But at that the instinct of parental authority rose again, outraged in Annie.

"Indeed, then, and I'll do no such thing. Go back to the field, I tell you," she cried, breaking again into anger. "I never heard the like of it,you to go off and not say as much as goodbye to your father."

Johnny's lips knit tight and his cheeks flushed.

"If you don't give it me," he said, "I'll go to the shop and borrow it off them, and tell them you were afraid I'd steal it. They won't be frightened to trust me, I'm thinking. And a good name that will leave on you in the country."

Annie's eyes filled with tears. "You wouldn't do the like of that, Johnny."

"I would, then, if you drove me to it, and wouldn't trust me with a pound or two."

"Indeed, then, it's not for the money I'm frightened," cried Annie, breaking into sobs. "You may have the money, since you force me, but I doubt it's little good will go with it. I wouldn't believe it of you, Johnny, to go away and leave your father without help. What way will he get the crops in, with wee Annie out at service and the other childer too young to labour?"

"If he has more nor he can work, let him set a field of it. There's plenty would take it. The crops are in the ground. Let him sell them in ground."

the

"Well you know your father

Robert came back to his dinner looking fatigued and vexed. "What came on Johnny that he wasn't back in the field?" he asked.

Then Annie told him the story of what had happened. Robert was deeply moved.

"To think now he would do the like of that," he said at last. "It's not for his leaving me I would mind so bad. though the dear knows, it's bad enough. But for him to go off without a word. I knew no more of what he was doing nor the cattle."

Annie seized the opening to make an appeal. Yet even as she pleaded, the certainty of rebuff was written in her eyes.

"Surely now, Robert, you'll follow him and bring him back. The boat won't be leaving, maybe, till the morrow. Ah, Robert, go now, and he won't refuse you!"

But Robert's face set hard, and a new bitterness came into his voice.

"If

"I will not," he said. he wants to go, let him. Maybe I done wrong to keep him. Maybe he's right. Maybe he's better to be a labourer in Scotland nor a farmer's son in this country. We must just shift without him. But the dear God knows how we'll do it. We're back again in the ditch, the very time I thought we had the road clear before us. What does Johnny care, though? He can make his own way, he's a good workman, I taught him. What need he care?"

"Ah, now, Robert," Annie broke in, "don't be hard on the boy. He gave thought to it, surely. Maybe you mightn't hold with what he thought, but he had a plan made out." "And what plan was that?" "For you to set the crop that is down in the fields, and let you get in yourself what you could."

Robert's face grew as dark as thunder-clouds.

"Is that the plan, then? Well he knew, and well you know, that I would sooner kill myself mowing and carting. Is there no pride in him, that he would let strangers in on the farm that we wrought to keep for him since he was born, and before he was born? Next year it would be a field I would letto strangers that would abuse. the land-and what would he care?"

not like you, all for pondering and reading, and planning away far beyond you. But he's a good, decent, steady boy, and it's my belief he'll send us his earnings just the same as he did before. He's not like a son that would drink or spend money reckless. It's just you that are too stubborn and he that is too stubborn. Take your potatoes now: there's the milk to them. Johnny 'll get better than potatoes where he's going."

"Ay," said Robert, "and that's the truth. Why would he stay when the land won't afford a meal of meat to them that work it. What had he ever but slavery and hardship? And if I could leave the farm clear to him, itself, what would he make out of it but slavery?" "Ah, what nonsense," Annie cried. "You have yourself worn out on the land, and sickened with it, like. But if you had the chance Johnny has, the time you and me was young, mind me now, you would have thought yourself well off. Ay, and there's many a one yet would think him well off. Troth, and I'm not sorry to have him out of the way of some of them that would be glad to get him for their lump of a girl. And Johnny's that soft he would be easy taken in.” Annie scoured a pan with great vehemence while she spoke, and Robert looked at her with open surprise.

"What's this now?" he said. "I heard nothing of this. Sure the boy's a boy yet."

"Ay, to be sure, you heard

working with vicious energy. "And you saw nothing-nor wouldn't see if it was under your nose.

Wasn't Johnny for

ever slipping away to that mountainy place of the M'Cormicks, and what would take him there, will you tell me?"

"Woman, dear, have you no sense? It was to buy his dirty tobacco he was dodging up there-and many's the time I checked him.-Well, he may smoke his fill now, Robert added angrily. "Give me my cup of tea.'

'Ay," said Annie, lifting the teapot from where it stood stewing, "and do you know now, Robert, it's that, and the like of that, he's gone for. You could never see he wasn't

the same kind as yourself. He's a man grown, and full of foolishness the same other young man."

as any