the property is represented as "setting fire with petroleum" to the
houses of two helpless men, and turning out "eighteen human beings into
the highway in the depth of winter." Not a word is said of the agent's
flat denial of these charges, nor a word of the advice given to the
agent by Sir Redvers Buller that the mortgagee ought to level the
cottages occupied by trespassers, nor a word about Father Quilter's
letter to Colonel Turner, branding his flock as "poor slaves" of the
League, and turning them over to "Mr. Roe or any other agent" to do as
he liked with them, since they could not, or would not, keep their
plighted faith given through their own priest.

This sort of ostrich fury is common enough among the regular drumbeaters
of the Irish agitation. But it is not creditable to a "Canadian priest."
Still less creditable is his direct arraignment of M. de Mandat
Grancey's good faith and veracity upon the strength of what he describes
as M. de Mandat Grancey's amplification and distortion of a story told
by himself. This was a tale of a priest called out to confess one of his
parishioners. The penitent accused himself of killing one man, and
trying to kill several others. The priest, as the dreadful tale went on,
made a tally on his sleeve, with chalk, of the crimes recited. "Good
heavens! my son," he cried at last, "what had all these men done to you
that you tried to send them all into eternity? Who were they?"

"Oh, Father, they were all bailiffs or tax-collectors!"

"You idiot!" exclaimed the confessor, angrily rubbing at his sleeve,
"why didn't ye tell me that before instead of letting me spoil my best
cassock?"

As I happened to have the book of M. de Mandat Grancey in my
despatch-box, I compared it with the attack made upon it. The results
were edifying. In the first place, M. de Mandat Grancey does not
indicate the Canadian priest as his authority. He says that he heard the
story, apparently at a dinner-table in France, from a _cure Irlandais_,
who was endeavouring to impress upon his hearers "the sympathy of the
clergy with the Land League." The "Canadian priest" now comes forward
and makes it a count in his indictment against M. de Mandat Grancey that
he is described as an "Irish curate," when he is in fact neither an
Irishman nor a curate. What was more natural than that an ecclesiastic,
claiming to live in Ireland, and telling stories in France about the
sympathy of the Irish clergy with the Land Leag