“That’s my misfortune.”

“And one who stands very high in the world.  They tell me you’re to be a great lord some day.”

“Either that or a little one,” said Neville, laughing.

“Anyways you’ll be a rich man with a handle to your name.  To me, living here in this out of the way parish, a lord doesn’t matter that.”  And Father Marty gave a fillip with his fingers.  “The only lord that matters me is me bishop.  But with them women yonder, the title and the money and all the grandeur goes a long way.  It has been so since the world began.  In riding a race against you they carry weight from the very awe which the name of an English Earl brings with it.”

“Why should they ride a race against me?”

“Why indeed,—­unless you ride a race against them!  You wouldn’t wish to injure that young thing as isn’t yet out of her teens?”

“God forbid that I should injure her.”

“I don’t think that you’re the man to do it with your eyes open, Mr. Neville.  If you can’t spake her fair in the way of making her your wife, don’t spake her fair at all.  That’s the long and the short of it, Mr. Neville.  You see what they are.  They’re ladies, if there is a lady living in the Queen’s dominions.  That young thing is as beautiful as Habe, as innocent as a sleeping child, as soft as wax to take impression.  What armour has she got against such a one as you?”

“She shall not need armour.”

“If you’re a gentleman, Mr. Neville,—­as I know you are,—­you will not give her occasion to find out her own wakeness.  Well, if it isn’t past one I’m a sinner.  It’s Friday morning and I mus’n’t ate a morsel myself, poor papist that I am; but I’ll get you a bit of cold mate and a drop of grog in a moment if you’ll take it.”  Neville, however, refused the hospitable offer.

“Father Marty,” he said, speaking with a zeal which perhaps owed something of its warmth to the punch, “you shall find that I am a gentleman.”

“I’m shure of it, my boy.”

“If I can do no good to your friend, at any rate I will do no harm to her.”

“That is spoken like a Christian, Mr. Neville,—­which I take to be a higher name even than gentleman.”

“There’s my hand upon it,” said Fred, enthusiastically.  After that he went to bed.

On the following morning the priest was very jolly at breakfast, and in speaking of the ladies at Ardkill made no allusion whatever to the conversation of the previous evening.  “Ah no,” he said, when Neville proposed that they should walk up together to the cottage before he went down to his boat.  “What’s the good of an ould man like me going bothering?  And, signs on, I’m going into Ennistimon to see Pat O’Leary about the milk he’s sending to our Union.  The thief of the world,—­it’s wathering it he is before he sends it.  Nothing kills me, Mr. Neville, but when I hear of all them English vices being brought over to this poor suffering innocent counthry.”