In these affairs with the agents, he had always told his people that “whenever a settlement came to be made, cash alone in the hand of the person representing them could make it properly.”  “Cash I must have,” he said, “and hold the cash ready for the moment.  When I had worked out a settlement with Captain Hill, I had a good part of the money in my hand ready to pay down.  L1450 was the sum total agreed upon, and after the further collection, necessitated by the settlement, there was a deficit of about L200.  I wrote to Professor Stuart,” he added, after a pause, “that I wanted about L200 of the sum-total.  But more has come in since then.  This remittance, from America yesterday, for example.”

“Do they send such remittances without being asked for them?” I inquired.

“Yes; they are now and again sending money, and some of them don’t send, but bring it.  Some of them go out to America now as they used to go to England—­just to work and earn some money, and come back.

“If they get on tolerably well they stay for a while, but they find America is more expensive than Ireland, and if, for any cause, they get out of work there, they come back to Ireland to spend what they have.  Naturally, you see,” said Father M’Fadden, “they find a certain pleasure to be seen by their old friends in the old place, after borrowing the four pounds perhaps to take them to America, coming back with the money jingling in their pockets, and in good clothes, and with a watch and a chain—­and a high hat.  And there is in the heart of the Irishman an eternal longing for his native land constantly luring him back to Ireland.  All do not succeed, though, in your country,” he said.  “We hear of two out of ten perhaps who do very well.  They take care we hear of that.  The rest disappear, and are never heard of again.”

“Then you do not encourage emigration?” I, asked, “even although the people cannot earn their living from the soil?”

Father M’Fadden hesitated a moment, and then replied, “No, for things should be so arranged that they may earn their living, not out of the country, but on the soil at home.  It is to that I want to bring the condition of the district.”

At this point Lord Ernest Hamilton came up and knocked at the door.  He was most courteously received by Father M’Fadden.  To my query why the Courts could not intervene to save the priests from taking all this trouble on themselves between the owners and the occupiers of the land, Father M’Fadden at first replied that the Courts had no power to intervene where, as in many cases in Gweedore, the holdings are subdivided.

“The Courts,” he said, “may not be, and I do not think they are, all that could be desired, though they undoubtedly do supply a more or less impartial arbitrator between the landlord and the tenant.  It is an improvement on the past when the landlords fixed the rents for themselves.”