the priest do but accept him? He is bound to look upon the
suppliant as a brand to be saved from the burning. "You stupid young
ass!" the priest may say to himself, apostrophising the boy; "why
don't you remain as you are for the present? Why do you come to
trouble me with a matter you can know nothing about?" But the priest
must do as his Church directs him, and the brands have to be saved
from the burning. Father Brosnan sent the boy to Father Malachi, and
Father Malachi told the lad to go to his terrestrial father. It was
this that Mr. Jones had expected, and there the boy was received as a
Catholic.

But to Father Brosnan the matter was much more important in its
political view. Father Brosnan knew the application as to his rent
which had been made by Pat Carroll to his landlord. He was of opinion
that no rent ought to be paid by any Irish tenant to any landlord--no
rent, at least, to a Protestant landlord. Wrath boiled within his
bosom when he heard of the answer which was given, as though Mr.
Jones had robbed the man by his refusal. Mr. Brosnan thought that
for the present a tenant was, as a matter of course, entitled to
abatement in his rent, as in a short time he must be entitled to his
land without paying any. He considered not at all the circumstances,
whether, as had been the case on certain properties in Mayo, all
money expended had been so expended by the tenant, or by the
landlord, as had been the case with Pat Carroll's land. That was an
injustice, according to Mr. Brosnan's theory; as is all property in
accordance with the teaching of some political doctors who are not
burdened with any.

It would have been unfair to Mr. Brosnan to say that he sympathised
with murderers, or that he agreed with those who considered that
midnight outrages were fair atonements; he demanded rights. He
himself would have been hot with righteous indignation, had such
a charge been made against him. But in the quarrel which was now
beginning all his sympathies were with the Carrolls at large, and
not with the Jones's at large. At every victory won by the British
Parliament his heart again boiled with indignation. At every
triumphant note that came over the water from America--which was
generally raised by the record of the dollars sent--he boiled, on
the other hand, with joy. He had gleams in his mind of a Republic.
He thought of a Saxon as an evil being. The Queen, he would say, was
very well, but she was better at a dista