his dissimilarity to the parish priest by his dirt and
untidiness. He was a violent politician; the Catholic Emancipation
had become law, and he therefore had no longer that grievance to
complain of; but he still had national grievances, respecting which
he zealously declaimed, when he could find a hearer. Repeal of the
Union was not, at that time, the common topic, morning and night, at
work and at rest, at table and even at the altar, as it afterwards
became; but there were, even then, some who maintained that Ireland
would never be herself, till the Union was repealed; and among these
was Father Cullen. He was as zealous for his religion as for his
politics; and he could become tolerable intimate with no Protestant,
without thinking he was specially called on to convert him. A
disciple less likely to make converts than Father Cullen it would be
difficult to imagine, seeing that in language he was most violent and
ungrammatical--in appearance most uncouth--in argument most unfair.
He was impatient if any one spoke but himself. He relied in all such
arguments on his power of proving logically that his own church
was the true church, and as his education had been logical, he put
all his arguments into syllogisms. If you could not answer him in
syllogisms, he conceived that you must be, evidently to yourself,
in the wrong, and that obstinacy alone prevented you from owning it.
Father Cullen's redeeming point was his earnestness,--his reality;
he had no humbug about him; whatever was there, was real; he had no
possible appreciation for a joke, and he understood no ridicule. You
might gull him, and dupe him for ever, he would never find you out;
his heart and mind were full of the Roman Catholic church and of his
country's wrongs; he could neither think nor speak of aught beside.

Ussher was the only Protestant whom this poor man was in the habit of
meeting, and he was continually attempting to convert him; in which
pursuit Ussher rather encouraged him with the purpose of turning him
into ridicule.

Such were the spiritual guides of the inmates of Ballycloran and its
neighbourhood.

On the Wednesday morning after the fair, Father John was sitting
eating his breakfast in his little parlour, attending much more to
a book on the table before him than to the large lumps of bread and
butter which he unconsciously swallowed, when the old woman servant,
Judy McCan, opened the door and said,

"Father John, plase, there's Deni