ill buy him a pig."

"It will indeed," said the priest, "it will buy him two!"

He had left the Palace without having asked the Bishop how his letter
had been received at Rome, and he stopped the car, and was about to
tell the driver to go back. But no matter, he would hear about his
letter some other time. He was bringing happiness to two poor people,
and he could not persuade himself to delay their happiness by one
minute. He was not bringing one pig, but two pigs, and now Mike Mulhare
would have to give him Norah and a calf; and the priest remembered that
James Murdoch had said, "What a fine house this will be to rear them
in." There were many who thought that human beings and animals should
not live together; but after all, what did it matter if they were
happy? And the priest forgot his letter to Rome in the thought of the
happiness he was bringing to two poor people. He could not see Norah
Mulhare that night; but he drove down to the famine road, and he and
the driver called till they awoke James Murdoch. The poor man came
stumbling across the bog, and the priest told him the news.

CHAPTER VI

JULIA CAHILL'S CURSE

In '95 I was agent of the Irish Industrial Society, and I spent three
days with Father O'Hara making arrangements for the establishment of
looms, for the weaving of homespuns and for acquiring plots of ground
whereon to build schools where the village girls could practice
lace-making.

The priest was one of the chief supporters of our movement. He was a
wise and tactful man, who succeeded not only in living on terms of
friendship with one of the worst landlords in Ireland, but in obtaining
many concessions from him. When he came to live in Culloch the landlord
had said to him that what he would like to do would be to run the
ploughshare through the town, and to turn "Culloch" into Bullock. But
before many years had passed Father O'Hara had persuaded this man to
use his influence to get a sufficient capital to start a bacon factory.
And the town of Culloch possessed no other advantages except an
energetic and foreseeing parish priest. It was not a railway terminus,
nor was it a seaport.

But, perhaps because of his many admirable qualities, Father O'Hara is
not the subject of this story. We find stories in the lives of the weak
and the foolish, and the improvident, and his name occurs here because
he is typical of not a few priests I have met in Ireland.

I left him early one Sunday mo