“But, Father M’Fadden,” I said, “I am told you are a practical agriculturist and engineer, and that you have contrived to get excellent work done by the people here, dividing them off into working squads, and assigning so many perches to so many—­surely then you must understand better than a dozen members of Parliament what they can be got to do?”

He smiled at this, and finally admitted that he had a plan of his own.  It was that the Government should advance sums for reclaiming the land.  “The people could live on part of their earnings while thus employed, and invest the surplus in sheep to be fed on the hill pastures.  When the reclamation was effected the families could be scattered out, and the holdings increased.  In this district alone there are 350 holdings of reclaimable land of 20 acres each, the reclamation of which, according to a competent surveyor, “would pay well.”  And the district could be improved by creating employment on the spot, establishing factories, developing fisheries, giving technical education, and encouraging cottage industries, which are so vigorously reviving in this district owing to the benevolent efforts of the Donegal Industrial Fund.”

Father M’Fadden spoke freely and without undue heat of his trial, and gave us a piquant account of his arrest.

This was effected at Armagh, just as he was getting into an early morning train.  A sergeant of police walked up as the train was about to start, and asked—­

“Are you not Father M’Fadden of Gweedore?”

“What interest have you in my identity?” responded the priest.

“Only this, sir,” said the officer, politely exhibiting a warrant.

“I had been in Armagh the previous day,” said Father M’Fadden, “attending the month’s memory of the late deceased Primate of All Ireland, Dr. M’Gettigan, and stayed at a private residence, that of Surgeon-Major Lavery, not suspecting that while enjoying the genial hospitality of the Surgeon-Major my steps were dogged by a detective, and that gentleman’s house watched by police.”

Of the trial Father M’Fadden spoke with more bitterness.  His eyes glowed as he exclaimed, “Can you imagine that they refused me bail, when bail had been allowed to such a felon as Arthur Orton?  Why should I have been locked up over two Sundays, for ten days, when I offered to pledge my honour to appear?” He made no other complaint of the magistrate, and none of the prosecutor, Mr. Ross.  He praised his own lawyer, too, but he strongly denounced the stenographer who took down his speech, or the parts of it which I told him I had seen in Dublin.

“Why, just think of it,” he exclaimed; “it took the clerk just eight minutes to read the report given by that stenographer of a speech which it took me an hour and twenty minutes to deliver!  I do not speak from the lips, I speak from the heart, and consequently rather rapidly; and a stenographer who can take down 190 words a minute has told me I run ahead of him!”