n I _do_? I can send him a curate who will
break his heart in six weeks."

I was not too much surprised, then, when one evening my dear old friend
and curate, Father Tom Laverty, came to me, with tears in his eyes and
an open letter in his hand:--

"I am off, Father Dan. Look at this!"

It was a succinct, laconic order to present himself to a parish priest
twenty miles distant, and to be in time to discharge his duties in that
parish the following Saturday and Sunday, for his jurisdiction was
transferred, etc.

It was a hard stroke. I was genuinely attached to Father Tom. We had the
same tastes and habits,--easy, contented, conservative, with a cordial
dislike of innovations of any kind. We held the same political opinions,
preached the same sermons, administered the Sacraments in the old way,
and had a reverence for antiquities in general. It was a sad break in my
life to part with him; and it is a harmless vanity on my part to say
that he was sorry to part from me.

"I suppose there's no help for it?" said he.

"No," said I; "but if you care--"

"No use," said he; "when _he_ has made up his mind you might as well be
talking to a milestone."

"And you must be off to-morrow?" said I, consulting the bishop's letter.

"Yes," said he, "short shrift."

"And who am I getting?" I wondered.

"Hard to guess," said he. He was in no humor for conversation.

The following week, that most melancholy of processions, a curate's
furniture _en route_, filed slowly through the village, and out along
the highroad, that led through bog and fen, and by lake borders to the
town of N----. First came three loads of black turf, carefully piled and
roped; then two loads of hay; a cow with a yearling calf; and lastly,
the house furniture, mostly of rough deal. The articles, that would be
hardly good enough for one of our new laborers' cottages, were crowned
by a kitchen table, its four legs pointing steadily to the firmament,
like an untrussed fowl's, and between them, carefully roped, was the
plague and the pet of the village, Nanny the goat, with her little kid
beside her. What Nanny could not do in the way of mischief was so
insignificant, that it need not be told. But the Celtic vocabulary,
particularly rich in expletives, failed to meet the ever-growing
vituperative wants of the villagers. They had to fall back on the Saxon,
and call her a "rep," "a rip," "de ribble," etc., etc. I walked side by
side with Father Laverty, who,