ings. She did in her heart of hearts believe that there was some
college or club of papists at Oxford, emissaries of the Pope or of
the Jesuits. In her moments of sterner thought the latter were the
enemies she most feared; whereas, when she was simply pervaded by
her usual chronic hatred of the Irish Roman Catholic hierarchy, she
was wont to inveigh most against the Pope. And this college, she
maintained, was fearfully successful in drawing away the souls of
young English students. Indeed, at Oxford a man had no chance against
the devil. Things were better at Cambridge; though even there there
was great danger. Look at A---- and Z----; and she would name two
perverts to the Church of Rome, of whom she had learned that they
were Cambridge men. But, thank God, Trinity College still stood firm.
Her idea was, that if there were left any real Protestant truth in
the Church of England, that Church should look to feed her lambs
by the hands of shepherds chosen from that seminary, and from that
seminary only.

"But isn't dinner nearly ready?" said Mr. Townsend, whose ideas were
not so exclusively Protestant as were those of his wife. "I haven't
had a morsel since breakfast." And then his wife, who was peculiarly
anxious to keep him in a good humour that all might come out about
Father Barney, made another little visit to the kitchen.

At last the dinner was served. The weather was very cold, and the
rector and his wife considered it more cosy to use only the parlour,
and not to migrate into the cold air of a second room. Indeed, during
the winter months the drawing-room of Drumbarrow Glebe was only used
for visitors, and for visitors who were not intimate enough in the
house to be placed upon the worn chairs and threadbare carpet of the
dining-parlour. And very cold was that drawing-room found to be by
each visitor.

But the parlour was warm enough; warm and cosy, though perhaps at
times a little close; and of evenings there would pervade it a smell
of whisky punch, not altogether acceptable to unaccustomed nostrils.
Not that the rector of Drumbarrow was by any means an intemperate
man. His single tumbler of whisky toddy, repeated only on Sundays
and some other rare occasions, would by no means equal, in point of
drinking, the ordinary port of an ordinary English clergyman. But
whisky punch does leave behind a savour of its intrinsic virtues,
delightful no doubt to those who have imbibed its grosser elements,
but not equal