nothing could make us do so?' I have been connected with
Irish farmers and landowners for thirty years as a land specialist,
and I tell you that the thing will work exactly as I have said. Put
the Rebel party in power, and see what will happen to you. It is hard
to believe that Englishmen will act so stupidly in a matter so vitally
affecting their own interests. That is why educated people both in
Ireland and England do not believe the bill will ever become law. They
cannot conceive the final acceptance of anything so utterly
preposterous. But call on me to-morrow, and I will go into the legal
possibilities of the question."

So I gathered posies of bog-bean bloom and walked round the big
boulders with which this sterile region is thickly strewn. The natives
know nothing of Home or any other Rule, and you might as well speak to
them of the Darwinian theory, or the philosophy of Herbert Spencer, or
the Homeric studies of the Grand Old Man, or the origin of the
Sanskrit language. The only opinion I could glean was the leading idea
of simple Irish agriculturists everywhere. A young fellow who appeared
to be in a state of intellectual advancement so far beyond that of the
other Barnans as to be almost out of sight, said:--

"I'm towld that there's to be a Parlimint in Galway city that's to
find imploymint for the people, an' that ivery man is to have five
acres of good land for nothin', and that if it isn't good land he is
to have ten acres, and that there's to be an Oirish King in Dublin,
an' that all the sojers an' pleecemen is to be put out o' the
counthry, an' all Protestants is to go to England, an' that's all very
good, but the Protestants might be allowed to stay, for they're dacent
folks, but thin they say that nobody's to howld land but the
Catholics."

I met an old lady clad in the short skirt of the Connaught peasantry,
walking bare-headed, bare-footed, and almost bare-legged from chapel,
carrying a bottle of holy water, probably destined for some important
purpose within the sacred precincts of the domestic circle. Perhaps
the old man was rheumatic, or it may be that the fairies had spoilt
the butther, or that the cow was bewitched, or that the shadow of a
black Protestant had fallen across the threshold. She was a promising
subject for original conversation, but unhappily she could speak no
English. My Galway friend explained the bottle, and said "Here we have
true religion. If you want the genuine, unadult