a race against you they carry weight from the very awe which
the name of an English Earl brings with it."

"Why should they ride a race against me?"

"Why indeed,--unless you ride a race against them! You wouldn't wish to
injure that young thing as isn't yet out of her teens?"

"God forbid that I should injure her."

"I don't think that you're the man to do it with your eyes open, Mr.
Neville. If you can't spake her fair in the way of making her your wife,
don't spake her fair at all. That's the long and the short of it, Mr.
Neville. You see what they are. They're ladies, if there is a lady
living in the Queen's dominions. That young thing is as beautiful
as Habe, as innocent as a sleeping child, as soft as wax to take
impression. What armour has she got against such a one as you?"

"She shall not need armour."

"If you're a gentleman, Mr. Neville,--as I know you are,--you will not
give her occasion to find out her own wakeness. Well, if it isn't past
one I'm a sinner. It's Friday morning and I mus'n't ate a morsel myself,
poor papist that I am; but I'll get you a bit of cold mate and a drop
of grog in a moment if you'll take it." Neville, however, refused the
hospitable offer.

"Father Marty," he said, speaking with a zeal which perhaps owed
something of its warmth to the punch, "you shall find that I am a
gentleman."

"I'm shure of it, my boy."

"If I can do no good to your friend, at any rate I will do no harm to
her."

"That is spoken like a Christian, Mr. Neville,--which I take to be a
higher name even than gentleman."

"There's my hand upon it," said Fred, enthusiastically. After that he
went to bed.

On the following morning the priest was very jolly at breakfast, and
in speaking of the ladies at Ardkill made no allusion whatever to the
conversation of the previous evening. "Ah no," he said, when Neville
proposed that they should walk up together to the cottage before he
went down to his boat. "What's the good of an ould man like me going
bothering? And, signs on, I'm going into Ennistimon to see Pat O'Leary
about the milk he's sending to our Union. The thief of the world,--it's
wathering it he is before he sends it. Nothing kills me, Mr. Neville,
but when I hear of all them English vices being brought over to this
poor suffering innocent counthry."

Neville had decided on the advice of Barney Morony, that he would on
this morning go down southward along the coast to Drumdeirg rock, in the
direc