and buying for one another; and, paying
properly for it, they did not feel it was wrong.
There were no vegetables to be had but the
black, rotting potatoes. We could get a sheep
for five shillings, because there was nothing
to feed sheep with; and for that reason the
mutton was hardly eatable. Nothing seemed
to have its proper taste or to be real food at
that time or for long after. You were laughing
to-day at the flocks of geese along the
road, spreading their wings and straddling
away before the car. Well, among all those
deserted villages that you passed through,
there was not a goose in those days. There
was not a pig, not a donkey in all the district,
from sea to sea."

"What became 'of the donkeys? The
people did not eat them, I suppose."

"Indeed but they did. My husband saw
the meat hanging out of their pockets. And
worse creatures than donkeys disappeared in
the same way. There was, after a time, not
a living creature but human beings to be
seen from sea to sea, except the horses that
brought the meal from the ships. The
second time that we thought we had seen the
worst was when the meal was sold at half-a-
crown the stone. Think what a price that
was! But it was paid as long as there was
any money in the district. That yard was as
crowded then as afterwards. My husband
and his men could not get through the business
of serving it, though, to save time, every
buyer must tie up his half-crown in the corner
of the bag he handed in. It was astonishing
the number of bad half-crowns we took in the
course of a few weeks: there was no time to
look whether the money was good or bad;
but my husband had to account for it, of
course, as if it was all good. The men would
begin at daylight (what a sight it was to open
the shutters, and see the people who had been
waiting all night!), and they went on kindly
all day. Towards evening the men would
grow silent, and sigh; and at eleven or twelve
o'clock they would say, ' Sir, you can't get
more out of me than is in me: I can't do it,
sir. I have had no refreshment all this day,
and I'm done up. I am willing to stand by
the people as long as I can, but I can't do
more than I am equal to.' Then my husband
would say, ' Well, go to your supper, and my
wife and I will turn to again for an hour, lest
some of these people should die before morning.
But we will shut up in an hour: by
that time the worst will be served.' We did
shut up in an hour, leaving, perhaps, sixty
or seventy people outside. But when the
men had sat down for awhile, and had had
their supper and their pipe, they would cheer
up; and then they agreed to what my husband
said: ' There are only sixty or seventy. Let
us send them away, and then we can perhaps
go to sleep, having done our best.' So we
opened again, and went on till two or three
in the morning. But that, you see, was while
people were still able to pay."

'' How could things be worse when the
money was gone?"

"Why, it was almost worse to know where
hunger was, without being told, than to have
it come before our eyes. We knew pretty well
how matters were with some good many
people who ceased to send for meal, and who
were never to be seen in the daylight: people
who lived in good houses, full of good furniture,
which of course they could not sell. My
husband mentioned this to the Friends' Relief
Committee, and they immediately desired him
to do what was necessary for such persons, in
the way in which they could receive it. So,
when the day's work was done, we used to
put up bags of meal, and my husband would
have the horse put into the cart, and he would
go round and drop these bags at the proper
doors in the dark. A difficulty came out of
this, however. They supposed they owed
these gifts to my husband; and it was not an
easy matter to explain at the time. But—
I don't know—perhaps some sights were worse
than knowing things that we did not see.
People would come to that window with two
baskets, one before and one behind, and—and
—a dead child in each."

After a pause she went on—

"My husband and I used to think that it
was the people's way—they thought it right,
of course—to sacrifice one child to give a
chance to the rest. We used to observe that
one child was particularly petted—always in
its mother's arms—and that one was always
excessively emaciated, and died presently;
and we used to think its share was given to
the others, and——"

"This is unbearable! " I exclaimed. But
in a moment I considered what it must have
been to see it, and was ashamed. I asked her
to go on. She did. It was a relief to her.

"It was a terrible thing to have to go out
at that time, and afterwards, when the fever
and cholera followed the famine. The dead
and dying used to lie in one's path. One
lady, crossing a field through the long grass,
found a child—a little girl—hidden there,
alive but insensible. She was saved; and so
was a little orphan creature of two years old,
who had strayed away by himself to a dunghill
on the road, where a pig seized him, and
would have destroyed him but for a car
happening to come up at the moment. There
were cases every day of little creatures being
found among the nettles, or squatted under
turf-stacks, or asleep at the door of a cabin
where the last of their relations lay dead
within. One of those saw the old roof
tumbled in on his mother's corpse. Some
neighbour who had just strength to do that
did it, because there was nobody to bury
her."

"Has not the lowest class of cabins
disappeared since that time, or nearly so? " I
inquired.

"Yes. The unroofed cottages, with their
stone gables standing up bare—a sight which