to considher you my tenants; and I wish to take this opportunity of informing you both, that should you act up to the opinion I entertain of you, by an attentive coorse of industry and good management, you will find in me an encouraging and indulgent landlord.  I know, Shane,’ says he to me, smiling a little, knowingly enough too, ’that you have been a little wild or so, but that’s past, I trust.  You have now sarious duties to perform, which you cannot neglect—­but you will not neglect them; and be assured, I say again, that I shall feel pleasure in rendhering you every assistance in my power in the cultivation and improvement of your farm.’—­’Go over, both of you,’ says my father, ’and thank his honor, and promise to do everything he says.’  Accordingly, we did so; I made my scrape as well as I could, and Mary blushed to the eyes, and dropp’d her curtshy.

“‘Ah!’ says the friar, ’see what it is to have a good landlord and a Christian gintleman to dale with.  This is the feeling which should always bind a landlord and his tenants together.  If I know your character, Squire Whitethorn, I believe you’re not the man that would put a Protestant tenant over the head of a Catholic one, which shows, sir, your own good sense; for what is a difference of religion, when people do what they ought to do?  Nothing but the name.  I trust, sir, we shall meet in a better place than this—­both Protestant and Catholic’

“‘I am happy, sir,’ says the Squire, ’to hear such principles from a man who I thought was bound to hould different opinions.’

“‘Ah, sir!’ says the friar, ’you little know who you’re talking to, if you think so.  I happened to be collecting a taste of oats, with the permission of my friend Doctor Corrigan here, for I’m but a poor friar, sir, and dropped in by mere accident; but, you know the hospitality of our country, Squire; and that’s enough—­go they would not allow me, and I was mintioning to this young gintleman, your son, how we collected the oats, and he insisted on my calling—­a generous, noble child!  I hope, sir, you have got proper instructors for him?’

“‘Yes,’ said the Squire; ‘I’m taking care of that point.’

“What do you think, sir, but he insists on my calling over to-morrow, that he may give me his share of oats, as I told him that I was a friar, and that he was a little parishioner of mine:  but I added, that that wasn’t right of him, without his papa’s consent.’

“‘Well, sir,’ says the Squire, ’as he has promised, I will support him; so if you’ll ride over to-morrow, you shall have a sack of oats—­at all events I shall send you a sack in the course of the day.’

“‘I humbly thank you, sir,’ says Father Rooney and I thank my noble little parishioner for his generosity to the poor old friar—­God mark you to grace, my dear; and wherever you go, take the ould man’s blessing along with you.’

“They then bid us good-night, and we rose and saw them to the door.