The British Work-for-Relief Scheme

Ireland, Queen's Village.

Scathach Jennings had grown noticeably thinner. The food in the cellar had been divided among the families.

She had begun seriously considering going to the workhouse. She might be selected to be sent to Australia to marry a convict, but there simply wasn't any food left at home.

Her two younger brothers were skin and bones. Of her two younger sisters, thirteen-year-old Ella was doing all right, but three-year-old Holica was often so hungry she couldn't sleep. Her eyes were sunken deep into her skull, making her look a little frightening.

Her eldest brother, Patrick, was never home. All the farm work fell to their parents. Bandits had begun appearing in the countryside, targeting poor villages.

The landlords had dogs, guns, and bodyguards, after all, while poor people usually had none of these. Clearly, robbing the latter was much safer than robbing the former.

As a result, the poor grew more numerous. At first, their village had tried to help them, but as the food in the church cellar dwindled, they could only look on coldly. They were struggling to survive themselves.

At last, the bandits came to Queen's Village. Fortunately, the church cellar held guns and gunpowder, and the village men took up arms and fought desperately. After spending a night battling who-knew-what, they were never troubled by bandits again.

In truth, the villagers generally had little idea how to shoot, and most of them suffered from night blindness. If the bandits hadn't carried torches, the villagers wouldn't have known where to aim.

The bandits who came to rob them were actually villagers from other places. They just wanted to survive; they had no intention of risking their lives. If they'd been truly desperate outlaws, they wouldn't have dared limit themselves to robbing poor villages. Farmers