m."

"What I say, is this," said Mr. O'Leary. "Let 'em manage for
'emselves. God bless my sowl! Why we shall be skinned alive if we
have to pay all this money back to Government. If Government chooses
to squander thousands in this way, Government should bear the brunt.
That's what I say." Eventually, Government, that is the whole nation,
did bear the brunt. But it would not have been very wise to promise
this at the time.

"But we need hardly debate all that at the present moment," said Mr.
Somers. "That matter of the roads has already been decided for us,
and we can't alter it if we would."

"Then we may as well shut up shop," said Mr. O'Leary.

"It's all very aisy to talk in that way," said Father Columb; "but
the Government, as you call it, can't make men work. It can't force
eight millions of the finest pisantry on God's earth--," and Father
Columb was, by degrees, pushing away the seat from under him, when he
was cruelly and ruthlessly stopped by his own parish priest.

"I beg your pardon for a moment, Creagh," said he; "but perhaps we
are getting a little out of the track. What Mr. Somers says is very
true. If these men won't work on the road--and I don't think they
will--the responsibility is not on us. That matter has been decided
for us."

"Men will sooner work anywhere than starve," said Mr. Townsend.

"Some men will," said Father Columb, with a great deal of meaning in
his tone. What he intended to convey was this--that Protestants, no
doubt, would do so, under the dominion of the flesh; but that Roman
Catholics, being under the dominion of the Spirit, would perish
first.

"At any rate we must try," said Father M'Carthy.

"Exactly," said Mr. Somers; "and what we have now to do is to see
how we may best enable these workers to live on their wages, and how
those others are to live, who, when all is done, will get no wages."

"I think we had better turn shopkeepers ourselves, and open stores
for them everywhere," said Herbert. "That is what we are doing
already at Berryhill."

"And import our own corn," said the parson.

"And where are we to get the money?" said the priest.

"And why are we to ruin the merchants?" said O'Leary, whose brother
was in the flour-trade, in Cork.

"And shut up all the small shopkeepers," said Father Columb,
whose mother was established in that line in the neighbourhood of
Castleisland.

"We could not do it," said Somers. "The demand upon us would be so
great, that