If a peasant family wanted to raise crops and stock on a certain piece of land, they had to enter into an agreement with some landlord to pay him a share of what they earned out of the land. This share was called rent. In Ireland it was always too high and its payment generally left the family poor. A while before Finn was born the landlord could evict—that is, he could put the family away from the house they had built and the fields they had cleared—if he did not approve of their religion, or of the way they voted at an election, or if he thought he could get another family to pay him a better rent—that is a bigger share of their earnings. But this power had now been taken from the landlord and he could only evict if the family failed to pay him the rent agreed upon.

It was often hard to make up this rent. In the years that Finn O'Donnell was going to school it was harder than ever because the prices the farmers got for their produce—their cattle, sheep and calves, their corn, butter and potatoes—had fallen very low. Landlords were evicting their tenants in every part of Ireland.

Near where Finn lived there was a poor village called Cahirdoney. Every family in it was evicted one rainy day. Finn, very frightened, followed his grandfather down to the village. He saw houses being knocked down by beams swung against them. Policemen were there with rifles in their hands and English soldiers were there in their red uniforms.

"Will they pull down granny's house?" Finn heard a little girl say to a young woman who was standing in the rain. "And Mrs. Sullivan's, and she with the baby? And Cahill's where the children used to make the play in? It makes you feel awful lonesome, doesn't it, Bridget?"

His grandfather made a speech to the people, telling them that they must join a League which had just been started, a League which was formed to help the people who were evicted and to protect those who were not able to pay their rents.

The policemen pushed Finn's grandfather away.

Afterwards, a hut was built for policemen who guarded the place. One night guns were fired into this hut. No one was hurt but the government was resolved to deal very severely with the people who were mixed up in the affair, and at last three men were arrested. One of them was Finn's father. The men were put upon their trial and they were sentenced to three years' imprisonment.

Finn's mother and grandfather were at the trial, and he remembered their coming back to the house. The grandfather, speaking in Irish, told the grandmother the result of the trial, and his mother took him on her knees and sat silently rocking him. That night people came into the house and Finn was put to bed early.

Next day he heard his mother tell his grandfather and grandmother that she would go to America and work there until near the time when his father would be released. She took him with her the next time she went to visit his father. She had been crying, but she ceased to weep when she took the boy into the place where his father was standing with men guarding him. His mother kissed him and he cried and then she mounted him on a stool where he could watch where the swallows were building their nest.

They went home together on the cart and his mother talked to him the whole time, telling him how good his father was and how she would miss her husband and her child while she was far away. His father then was taken to another gaol and a week afterwards his mother went to America.

Afterwards the house was very lonely. His grandmother became more silent than ever; she did her work in the house without speaking to anyone, and at night when she sat by the fire she made only a few remarks to Finn's grandfather or to the old men or women who came in. His grandfather sat by the loom all day, and at night he read the manuscripts that he took out of the chest or talked to the people about the old times in Ireland. His uncle Bartley often took Finn on the cart he used to drive and showed him many things on the road and in the town where he lived.