eir rents; but he did
most emphatically assert that there were not a few of them who really
could not pay their rents.

"I assure you," he said, "there are some of them who cannot even pay
their dues to their priest, and when I say that, you will know how
pinched and driven they must indeed be." It was in view of these tenants
that he seemed to justify the course of Mr. Dunne and Mr. Kilbride.
"They must all stand or fall together." He had nothing to say to the
discredit of Lord Lansdowne; but he spoke with some bitterness of the
agent, Mr. Townsend Trench, as having protested against Lord Lansdowne's
making reductions here while he had himself made the same reductions on
the neighbouring estate of Mrs. Adair.

"In truth," he said, "Mr. Trench has made all this trouble worse all
along. He is too much of a Napoleon"--and with a humorous twinkle in his
eye as he spoke--"too much of a Napoleon the Third.

"I was just reading his father's book when you came in. Here it is," and
he handed me a copy of Trench's _Realities of Irish Life_.

"Did you ever read it? This Mr. Trench, the father, was a kind of
Napoleon among agents in his own time, and the son, you see, thinks it
ought to be understood that he is quite as great a man as his father.
Did you never hear how he found a lot of his father's manuscripts once,
and threw them all in the fire, calling out as he did so, 'There goes
some more of my father's vanity?'"

About his people, and with his people, Father Maher said he "felt most
strongly." How could he help it? He was himself the son of an evicted
father.

"Of course, Father Maher," I said, "you will understand that I wish to
get at both sides of this question and of all questions here. Pray tell
me then, where I shall find the story of the Luggacurren property most
fully and fairly set forth in print?"

Without a moment's hesitation he replied, "By far the best and fairest
account of the whole matter you will get in the Irish correspondence of
the London _Times_."

How the conflict would end he could not say. But he was at a loss to see
how it could pay Lord Lansdowne to maintain it.

He very civilly pressed me to stay and lunch with him, but when I told
him I had already accepted an invitation from Mr. Hutchins, he very
kindly bestirred himself to find my jarvey.

I hastened back to the lodge, where I found a very pleasant little
company. They were all rather astonished, I thought, by the few words I
had