"Maybe you didn't hear he's got the Coppinger's Court Agency?
Young Coppinger offered it to him yesterday."

"It's a good thing it's out of Talbot-Lowry's hands anyhow," growled
Father Sweeny.

"Larry's up at my house every day now, about a concert they're to
have," went on the Doctor, tranquilly. "Tishy's helping him. He's very
fond of music. I think you're mistaken in thinking he'll be married to
one of the Major's daughters in such a hurry!"

"The first thing he'll want to do is to tidy up his property and
pacify the tenants," said Dr. Aherne, in his small, piping voice.
"They're not too pleased with the way they are now. The Major was
rather short with some of them, now and again. There was Herlihy, and
two of the Briens, was talking to me and saying what would they do at
all with Father Tim here, away. They were thinking would Father
Hogan--"

"Br-r-r-r-r-h!"

As a bull shakes his head, with a reverberating roar at the foes he
cannot reach, so did Father Tim Sweeny, crippled and furious, roll his
big head, growling, on his pillows. His dark hair lay in tight rings
on his broad and bulging forehead, and curled in strength over his
head back to the tonsure. His eyes were congested with the unavailing
rage that possessed him, as he thought of his parish left leaderless.

Had the "Ballad of the Bull" then been written, and had Dr. Mangan
been acquainted with it (which seems unlikely) he might have again
proved his culture by remembering the injunction to pity "this fallen
chief," as he saw the impotent wrath in Father Tim's bovine
countenance.

"Don't worry yourself now, Father," he said, consolingly, "I'll
undertake to say it will be all right about the site for the chapel,
and what's more, I'll undertake to say there'll be nothing done about
it, or the tenants, or anything else, till you're well. The people
will do nothing without you!"

He looked at his huge, old-fashioned gold watch.

"Oh, b' Jove, I must be off! Tell me, did you hear they have Larry
Coppinger chosen to be the candidate, when Prendergast retires, as he
says he will, before the next election? There won't be much talk of
tea-parties for Larry at Mount Music then! Any tea-party there that
he'd go to once he was a Nationalist M.P., I think he'd be apt to get
'his tay in a mug!'"

The Doctor got up and moved towards the door.

"I'll support him, so!" Father Sweeny called after him.

CHAPTER XXII

There are families, as there a