am
situated." Then the priest assented, and they both went on towards the
beach, walking very slowly. "If I alone were concerned, I would give
up everything for Miss O'Hara. I am willing to give up everything as
regards myself. I love her so dearly that she is more to me than all the
honours and wealth that are to come to me when my uncle dies."

"What is to hinder but that you should have the girl you love and your
uncle's honours and wealth into the bargain?"

"That is just it."

"By the life of me I don't see any difficulty. You're your own masther.
The ould Earl can't disinherit you if he would."

"But I am bound down."

"How bound? Who can bind you?"

"I am bound not to make Miss O'Hara Countess of Scroope."

"What binds you? You are bound by a hundred promises to make her your
wife."

"I have taken an oath that no Roman Catholic shall become Countess
Scroope as my wife."

"Then, Mr. Neville, let me tell you that you must break your oath."

"Would you have me perjure myself?"

"Faith I would. Perjure yourself one way you certainly must, av' you've
taken such an oath as that, for you've sworn many oaths that you would
make this Catholic lady your wife. Not make a Roman Catholic Countess of
Scroope! It's the impudence of some of you Prothestants that kills me
entirely. As though we couldn't count Countesses against you and beat
you by chalks! I ain't the man to call hard names, Mr. Neville; but if
one of us is upstarts, it's aisy seeing which. Your uncle's an ould man,
and I'm told nigh to his latter end. I'm not saying but what you should
respect even his wakeness. But you'll not look me in the face and tell
me that afther what's come and gone that young lady is to be cast on one
side like a plucked rose, because an ould man has spoken a foolish word,
or because a young man has made a wicked promise."

They were now standing again, and Fred raised his hat and rubbed his
forehead as he endeavoured to arrange the words in which he could best
propose his scheme to the priest. He had not yet escaped from the idea
that because Father Marty was a Roman Catholic priest, living in a
village in the extreme west of Ireland, listening night and day to the
roll of the Atlantic and drinking whisky punch, therefore he would be
found to be romantic, semi-barbarous, and perhaps more than semi-lawless
in his views of life. Irish priests have been made by chroniclers of
Irish story to do marvellous things; and Fred Nev