ld test all his powers, backed though he was by the money and the
influence of the Government.

Mat's speeches, the articles in the newspapers, and the vigorous efforts
of the few honest men in the town, had at last roused Ballybay until it
began to share some of the profound horror and indignation which the
action of Crowe had provoked throughout the country generally. There was
but one more thing necessary, and the defeat of Crowe was certain; if
the bishop joined in the opposition, there was no possibility of his
winning.

All Ireland waited in painful tension to see what the verdict of the
bishop would be. Mat heard it before anybody else, for a young curate
who lived in the College House with the bishop, and was a fierce
Nationalist, gave Mat a daily bulletin; the bishop resolved to support
the Solicitor-General.

At first nobody would believe the tale; but the next day it was put
beyond all doubt, and Mat was almost suffocated by his own wrath as he
saw the "Seraph," with his divine face, arm in arm with the perjured
ruffian that had brought sorrow to so many thousands of homes.

Mat fought on, but it was no longer with any strong hope of winning. His
face grew darker every day, and the lines became drawn about his eyes,
for there was another struggle going on in his mind at this moment, as
well as the political contest in which he was engaged.

The reader may remember the monitor of the school in which Mat was a
pupil when the eviction of the widow Cunningham took place. The monitor
was now the teacher of the National School, and Mat and he had begun to
have many colloquies.

Michael Reed was regarded as a very sardonic and disagreeable person by
most of the people of Ballybay. His hatchet face seemed appropriate to a
man who never seemed to agree with the opinion of anybody else, who
sneered, it was thought, all round, who laughed when other people wept,
and who derided the moments of exultant hope. He had always been among
those who hated and distrusted Crowe, and Mat, who was intolerant
himself, rather avoided him, while he still had faith in the traitor.
But the wreck of all his illusions sent him repentant to Reed, and they
had many conversations, in which Mat found himself listening willingly
and after a while even greedily, to ideas that a short time before he
would have been himself the first to denounce as folly and madness.

The idea of Reed was that the only way to work out the freedom of
Irela