Before we sat down to luncheon young Mr. Olphert came in.  It was curious to see this quiet, well-bred young gentleman throw down his belt and his revolver on the hall table, like his gloves and his umbrella.  “Quite like the Far West,” I said.  “And we are as far in the West as we can get,” he replied laughingly.

Our luncheon was excellent—­so good, in fact, that we felt a kind of remorse as if we had selfishly quartered ourselves upon a beleaguered garrison.  But Mr. Olphert said he had no fear of being starved out.  Personally he was, and always had been, on the best terms with the people of Falcarragh.  The older tenants, even now, if he met them walking in the fields when no one was in sight, would come up and salute him, and say how “disgusted” they were with what was going on.  It was the younger generation who were troublesome—­more troublesome, he added, to their own parish priest than they were to him.  Three or four years ago a returned American Irishman, an avowed unbeliever, but an active Nationalist and one of Mr. Forster’s “suspects,” had come into the neighbourhood and done his worst to break up the parish.  He used to come to Falcarragh on a Sunday, and get up on a stone outside the chapel while Father M’Fadden was saying Mass or preaching, and harangue such people as would listen to him, and caricature the priest and the sermon going on within sound of his own voice.  “I am myself a Protestant,” said Mr. Olphert, “but I have a great respect for priests who do their duty; and the conduct of Father M’Fadden of Gweedore, in countenancing this man, who tried to overthrow the authority of Father M’Fadden of Glena, excited my indignation.  As to what is going on now,” said Mr. Olphert, “it is to Father M’Fadden of Gweedore, and to Father Stephens here, that the trouble is chiefly to be charged.”  This tallies with what I heard at Gweedore from my Galwegian acquaintance.  He thought Mr. Olphert, and Mr. Hewson, the agent, ought to have made peace on the terms which Father Stephens said he was willing to accept for the tenants, these being a reduction of 3s. 4d. in the pound, if Mr. Olphert would extend the reduction to the whole year.  My Galwegian thought this reasonable, because in this region the rent, it appears, is only collected once a year.  With this impartial temper, my Galwegian still maintained that but for the two priests—­the parish priest of Gweedore and the curate of Falcarragh—­there need have been no trouble at Falcarragh.  There had been no “evictions.”  When the tenants first went to Mr. Olphert they asked a reduction of 4s. in the pound on the non-judicial rents, and this Mr. Olphert at once agreed to give them.  The tenants had regularly paid their rents for ten years before.  That they are not going down in the world would appear from the fact that the P.O.  Savings Banks’ deposits at Falcarragh, which stood at L62, 15s. 10d. in 1880, rose in 1887 to L494, 10s. 8d.  A small number of them had gone into