as then sickly, and as I wouldn't be
allowed two, I found that it might be convenient to call in the Friar
occasionally, a regulation he did not at all relish, for he said he
could make far more by questing and poaching about among the old women
of the parish, with whom he was a great favorite, in consequence of the
Latin hymns he used to sing for them, and the great cures he used to
perform--a species of devotion which neither I nor my curate had time to
practise. So, in order to renew my intimacy, I sent him a bag of oatmeal
and a couple of flitches of bacon, both of which he readily accepted,
and came down to me on the following day to borrow three guineas. After
attempting to evade him--for, in fact, I had not the money to spare--he
at length succeeded in getting them from me, on the condition that
he was to give my curate's horse and mine a month's grass, by way of
compensation, for I knew that to expect payment from him was next to
going for piety to a parson.

"'I will,' said he, 'give your horses the run of my best field'--for
he held a comfortable bit of ground; 'but,' he added, 'as you have been
always cutting at me about my principle, I must insist, if it was only
to convince you of my ginerosity, that you'll lave the choosing of the
month to myself.'

"As I really wanted an assistant at the time, in consequence of my
curate's illness, he had me bound, in some degree, to his own will. I
accordingly gave him the money; but from that till the day of his death,
he never sent for our horses, except when there was a foot and a half of
snow on the ground, at which time he was certain to despatch a messenger
for him, 'with Father Hennessy's compliments, and he requested Doctor
Finnerty to send the horses to Father Hennessy's field, to ate their
month's grass.'"

"But is it true, Docthor, that his face was shinin' after his death?"

"True enough, and to my own knowledge, long before that event."

"Dear me," exclaimed Mave, "he was a holy man afther all!"

"Undoubtedly he was," said the priest; "there are spots in the sun, Mrs.
O'Shaugh-nessy--we are not all immaculate. There never was one sent
into this world without less or more sin upon them. Even the saints
themselves had venial touches about them, but nothing to signify."

"Docthor," said the uncle, pertinaciously adhering to the original
question, "you have an opportunity of knowin' what a good parish might
be worth to a smart, active priest? For the sake