Loch
Sheen? No; may this be my curse if I do!" and Joe Reynolds swallowed
a glass of whiskey; "and you may tell Mr. Thady, Pat, if he wants
the boys to stick to him, let him stick to them, and not be helping
a d----d ruffian to be dhriving the lives out of them he should
befriend. And maybe he will want us, and that soon; and if he'll
stick to us now, as his fathers always did, sure it's little he need
be fearing Flannelly and Keegan. By G----, the first foot they set in
Ballycloran they shall leave there forever, if Thady Macdermot will
help rid his father's land of that bloody ruffian."

"It's little Mr. Thady loves the Captain, Joe, and it's little he
ever will, I think; however, you can come up, you know, on Friday,
and say your own say about your brother, and the rint and all."

"And so I will come, Pat; but there's all the rint I have, and Mrs.
Mulready, I think, 'll have the best part of that," and he jingled
a few halfpence in his pocket. So ended the meeting previous to the
conversation in Macdermot's rent-office.

CHAPTER V.

FATHER JOHN.

The Rev. John McGrath was priest of the parish of Drumsna at the time
of which we write. This parish contains the post town of Drumsna
and the country adjacent, including the town-land and demesne of
Ballycloran. At this time the spacious chapel which now stands on the
hill about two miles out of Drumsna had not been built, and Father
John's chapel was situated on the road from Drumsna to Ballycloran.
Near this he had built himself a small cottage in the quasi-Gothic
style, for Father John was a man of taste; he rented also about
twenty acres of land, half of this being on the Macdermots' estate.

The Rev. Mr. McGrath is destined to appear somewhat prominently in
this history, and I must therefore be excused in giving a somewhat
elaborate description of him.

He had been, like many of the present parish priests in Ireland,
educated in France; he had been at college at St. Omer, and
afterwards at Paris, and had officiated as a cure there; he had
consequently seen more of French manners and society than usually
falls to the lot of Irish theological students in that capital. He
was, also, which is equally unusual, a man of good family, and from
his early avocations was more fitted than is generally the case
with those of his order, to mix in society. He possessed also very
considerable talents, and much more than ordinary acquirements, great
natural _bonhommie