Clane will find out the harm of her good spaches
and doings."

The words were hardly out of her mouth when the priest entered. The
storm on his brow was not unnoted by Biddy, but she respectfully set a
chair for him in the cleanest part of the room. She was not quite so
easily terrified by priestly wrath and authority as she had been in
her own country; for she had the sense to know that the ghostly
father's malediction did not, as in Ireland, entail a long course of
temporal misfortunes upon the poor victims of his displeasure. But she
had not yet acknowledged to herself the doubts that really existed in
her mind in regard to the truth of the Romish faith; she still clung
to the errors in which she had been brought up, and feared the effect
on her eternal happiness of Father M'Clane's displeasure. So it was
with a beating heart that she awaited his time to address her.

"Do you know that your daughter is a heretic?" was his first
question.

"Indade, no, yer riverence," replied Biddy.

"An' what sort o' a mother are you, Biddy Dillon, to stand still and
look on while the wolf stales the best o' yer flock? You might have
known that heretic family would lave not a stone unturned to catch her
at last. And so she can read--"

"_Read!_" interrupted the astonished woman.

"Yes, read! And it's the heretics' Bible she has read, too,--and all
through your fault. Mighty proud ye have been o' all the fine
housekeeping ways she has learned, and very thankful, no doubt, for
the bits o' could victuals from the big house; but where's the good
now? Ye may thank yourself that she will lose her sowl for ever."

Mrs. Dillon started and turned pale as the door softly opened, and
Annorah herself, unobserved by the priest, came in. He went on: "Do
you call her better, the pestilent crather, when, from her first going
to the grand place on the hill, never a word about them has been got
from her at confession? The obstinate crather!"

"I came to your riverence for spiritual good," said Annorah, now
coming forward and laying a fat chicken and sundry paper parcels
beside her week's wages on the little table by her mother's side. "I
came for spiritual good, and ye thried to teach me to tattle. It's a
mane trade intirely, lettin' alone the maneness of sich as teach it."

"Annorah!" exclaimed her mother, "do you dare to spake in that way o'
the praste himself?"

"I mean no harm, mother."

"No harm!" repeated Father M'Clane, turning fi