'What do you want ?' I asked.

Whereupon they both arose, and Pat Kehoe pointed to Maher.

Maher fumbled at his clothes, and rubbed himself softly for a bit, and then produced a scrap of paper.
'It's a bit of paper from the tenants, sir,' he said.

A queer bit of paper it was to look at--ruled paper, with a composition written upon it which might have been the work of a village schoolmaster.

It was neither signed nor addressed! The pith of it was in these words,--'in consequence of the manner in which we have been harassed, our cattle driven throughout the country, and our crops not sown, we shall be unable to pay the half-year's rent due in March, in addition to the reduction already claimed!' I own I rather lost my temper at this! Remember I had already plainly refused to give 'the reduction already claimed,' and had told them not once, but twenty times, that I would never surrender to the 'Plan of Campaign'! I am afraid my language was Pagan rather than Parliamentary--but I told them plainly, at least, that if they did not break from the Plan of Campaign, and pay their debts, they might be sure I would turn the whole of them out! I gave them back their precious bit of paper and sent them packing.
"One of them, I have told you, was a mountain man, Stephen Maher.