not fascinated
him. He had chosen to come to Ireland with his regiment for this year
instead of at once assuming the magnificence of his position in England,
in order that he might indulge the spirit of adventure before he assumed
the duties of life. And it seemed to him that in dining and sleeping at
an Irish priest's house on the shores of the Atlantic, with the prospect
of seal shooting and seeing a very pretty girl on the following morning,
he was indulging that spirit properly. But Lady Mary Quin thought that
he was misbehaving himself and taking to very bad courses. When she
heard that he was to sleep at the priest's house, she was quite sure
that he would visit Mrs. O'Hara on the next day.

The dinner at the priest's was very jovial. There was a bottle of sherry
and there was a bottle of port, procured, chiefly for the sake of
appearance, from a grocer's shop at Ennistimon;--but the whiskey had
come from Cork and had been in the priest's keeping for the last dozen
years. He good-humouredly acknowledged that the wine was nothing, but
expressed an opinion that Mr. Neville might find it difficult to beat
the "sperrits." "It's thrue for you, Father Marty," said the rival
priest from Milltown Malbay, "and it's you that should know good
sperrits from bad if ony man in Ireland does."

"'Deed thin," replied the priest of Liscannor, "barring the famine
years, I've mixed two tumblers of punch for meself every day these
forty years, and if it was all together it'd be about enough to give
Mr. Neville a day's sale-shooting on in his canoe." Immediately after
dinner Neville was invited to light his cigar, and everything was easy,
comfortable, and to a certain degree adventurous. There were the two
priests, and a young Mr. Finucane from Ennistimon,--who however was
not quite so much to Fred's taste as the elder men. Mr. Finucane wore
various rings, and talked rather largely about his father's demesne. But
the whole thing was new, and by no means dull. As Neville had not left
Ennis till late in the day,--after what he called a hard day's work in
the warrior line,--they did not sit down till past eight o'clock; nor
did any one talk of moving till past midnight. Fred certainly made for
himself more than two glasses of punch, and he would have sworn that the
priest had done so also. Father Marty, however, was said by those who
knew him best to be very rigid in this matter, and to have the faculty
of making his drink go a long way.