d of the year.

"And if he would there is none for him to eat," said Mr. Townsend,
calling to mind the way in which the larder had of late been emptied.

Protestant clergymen in Ireland in those days had very frequently
other reasons for fasting than those prescribed by ecclesiastical
canons. A well-nurtured lady, the wife of a parish rector in the
county Cork, showed me her larder one day about that time. It
contained two large loaves of bread, and a pan full of stuff which I
should have called paste, but which she called porridge. It was all
that she had for herself, her husband, her children, and her charity.
Her servants had left her before she came to that pass. And she was a
well-nurtured, handsome, educated woman, born to such comforts as you
and I enjoy every day,--oh, my reader! perhaps without much giving of
thanks for them. Poor lady! the struggle was too much for her, and
she died under it.

Mr. Townsend was, as I have said, the very opposite to Mr. Carter,
but he also was a man who could do without the comforts of life, if
the comforts of life did not come readily in his way. He liked his
glass of whisky punch dearly, and had an idea that it was good for
him. Not caring much about personal debts, he would go in debt for
whisky. But if the whisky and credit were at an end, the loss did not
make him miserable. He was a man with a large appetite, and who took
great advantage of a good dinner when it was before him; nay, he
would go a long distance to insure a good dinner; but, nevertheless,
he would leave himself without the means of getting a mutton chop,
and then not be unhappy. Now Mr. Carter would have been very unhappy
had he been left without his superfine long black coat.

In tendering his invitation to Mr. Carter, Mr. Townsend had explained
that with him the _res angusta domi_, which was always a prevailing
disease, had been heightened by the circumstances of the time; but
that of such crust and cup as he had, his brother English clergyman
would be made most welcome to partake. In answer to this, Mr. Carter
had explained that in these days good men thought but little of
crusts and cups, and that as regarded himself, nature had so made him
that he had but few concupiscences of that sort. And then, all this
having been so far explained and settled, Mr. Carter came.

The first day the two clergymen spent together at Berryhill, and
found plenty to employ them. They were now like enough to be in want