sed with care, and consequently with expense, for careful
dressing is ever expensive. He always wore new black gloves, and
a very long black coat which never degenerated to rust, black
cloth trousers, a high black silk waistcoat, and a new black hat.
Everything about him was black except his neck, and that was always
scrupulously white.

Mr. Carter was a good man--one may say a very good man--for he gave
up himself and his money to carry out high views of charity and
religion, in which he was sincere with the sincerity of his whole
heart, and from which he looked for no reward save such as the godly
ever seek. But yet there was about him too much of the Pharisee.
He was greatly inclined to condemn other men, and to think none
righteous who differed from him. And now he had come to Ireland with
a certain conviction that the clergy of his own church there were men
not to be trusted; that they were mere Irish, and little better in
their habits and doctrines than under-bred dissenters. He had been
elsewhere in the country before he visited Drumbarrow, and had shown
this too plainly; but then Mr. Carter was a very young man, and it is
not perhaps fair to expect zeal and discretion also from those who
are very young.

Mrs. Townsend had heard of him, and was in dismay when she found that
he was to stay with them at Drumbarrow parsonage for three days. If
Mr. Carter did not like clerical characters of her stamp, neither
did she like them of the stamp of Mr. Carter. She had heard of him,
of his austerity, of his look, of his habits, and in her heart she
believed him to be a Jesuit. Had she possessed full sway herself in
the parish of Drumbarrow, no bodies should have been saved at such
terrible peril to the souls of the whole parish. But this Mr. Carter
came with such recommendation--with such assurances of money given
and to be given, of service done and to be done,--that there was no
refusing him. And so the husband, more worldly wise than his wife,
had invited the Jesuit to his parsonage.

"You'll find, Aeneas, he'll have mass in his room in the morning
instead of coming to family prayers," said the wife.

"But what on earth shall we give him for dinner?" said the husband,
whose soul at the present moment was among the flesh-pots; and indeed
Mrs. Townsend had also turned over that question in her prudent mind.

"He'll not eat meat in Lent, you may be sure," said Mrs. Townsend,
remembering that that was the present perio