I received a letter from the contractors in
London, announcing that a fresh sub-surveyor was
on his way to my assistance, and assuring me
that Mr. Patrick O'Dwyer had been most highly
recommended on the score of merit and
experience. In a day or two Mr. O'Dwyer arrived,
a well-built, well-looking, young fellow, with
dark hair and eyes, and a blue scar across his
right cheek that looked suspiciously like the
mark of a sabre-cut. When he reached Podlowitz,
the wretched hamlet where our huts were
pitched, he alighted from the drosky, and came
straight into the little wooden dwelling where
I was paying wages to the men. He held out
his hand to me, taking off his travelling cap with
a frank bright smile. There was an "Obermann"
present, a sort of sub-contractor, whom
in England we should call a " ganger," and this
man started forward with a smothered cry the
instant his eyes lit on the young Irishman, and
seemed about to kneel at his feet.

"Hilloa! Theodore, what on earth are you
dreaming of?" cried I, in surprise; but the new
comer looked at the peasant quite coldly, without
moving a muscle of his face, and said something
about the odd ways of the people. In an
instant more, the ganger who had been so eager
in his apparent recognition was as quiet and
composed as before, humbly excusing his excitement
as a Polish fashion of welcoming strangers.

Young O'Dwyer and I got on famously
together. Whether the lad— he could not have
been oue-and-twenty— was quite as practised a
hand with the instruments as the contractors
had represented him to be, was not so certain,
but he had wonderful quickness, energy, and an
eager desire to please, which had something
almost feminine in its vivacity. No trouble
tired him, no difficulty daunted him, and I was
often obliged to blame his rash recklessness of
personal danger among those tenacious
quagmires and deep streams over which we had to
carry our works as best we might. In managing
the labourers, my subordinate proved priceless.
They would sooner go a league for him than a
mile for me, and the very facility with which he
conversed with them, speaking Latin at one
moment, and some Slavonian dialect at another
—his mother, he told me, had been a Hungarian
—almost made me envy him.

Podlowitz was central in its situation, but it
had few other merits. It was a mere hamlet,
composed of eight or ten huts like monstrous
beehives, the thatch of whose round roofs was
black with soot and green with weeds. There
were a few miserable fields, ill fenced, and full
of stunted trees and patches of tall broom plants,
where some hungry crops of oats were reared in
good seasons. The lean cattle that browsed
under the care of two or three half-clad children,
the swine whose nutriment was picked up in the
woods, and the potatoes raised in the patches
of garden-ground, had all alike a look of poverty
and neglect. Close up to the cultured land
came the dark forest— pines, and sand, and heath,
and then heath, pines, and sand, for verst after
verst, to north and south.

Our hut was a double one, of good well-
seasoned wood, warmed by a couple of iron stoves
of Berlin manufacture. In addition to this,
there was a house for the Ober Director of the
workpeople, a clever Jew, with a considerable
aptitude for accounts, but whose influence over
the Poles was trifling, and four long sheds
where the labourers dwelt. There was not a
shop, nor a post-oflice, within miles. If one
wanted so much as a ball of twine or a clasp-
knife, it was necessary to ride all the way to
Radom or Lublin to get it. As for a book in
any intelligible language, that was not to be
procured at any place nearer than Warsaw or
Cracow.

In this banishment, in spite of all the gloomy
influences of the scenery and surroundings, we
were by no means unhappy. Our hands were
too full for time to hang heavy on them; and
even when the snow began to fall, sealing up
the roads, and checking our progress for a time,
we found new resources in the wild country
about us. We had our guns, and made up
heavy bags of winter hares and wild-fowl.
There were wolf-hunts, in which all the peasants
took a part, and these were the most
picturesquely barbarous scenes imaginable, what
with nets, and spears, yelping dogs, and shouting
men, in every variety of semi-Oriental
costume, more or less wild and shaggy according
to the remoteness of the wearer's district from
a great highway.

The long evenings were what I had dreaded
the most, when making up my mind to a winter
spent among the pine-woods of Poland. But
O'Dwyer was a capital companion, able and
ready to play at chess, cards, or, I believe,
anything else, gifted with a store of amusing
anecdotes, and no mean performer on flute and
horn. Indeed, he was an enthusiast about
music, and would play at my request the
most difficult and scientific passages of the
German masters, always straying at last into
some wild, bold burst of simply sad melody—
an old Irish tune, as he would tell me when
questioned on the subject. He was always
good humoured, but I fancy that he made an
effort to keep his spirits when I was present;
for it often happened that when I entered the
hut unexpectedly, I found Patrick sitting with
his head resting on his hand, eyeing the fire
with moody thoughtfulness; and once I am
certain, that I saw him hastily slip into the
breast of his coat the miniature of a girl, at
which he had been gazing when my step was
heard on the threshold.

Much older and more experienced in worldly
matters than my assistant could well be, I felt
a strong liking for the lad, and would have been
glad to win his confidence, in hopes of being
able to give advice that might prove useful, but
no such opportunity occurred. O'Dwyer was
not happy or at ease, that was plain; but there
was something about him which made it impossible
to force counsel or help upon him. With
all his easy gentleness of bearing, the sub-
surveyor had a quiet dignity that instinctively