"The meaning of that was that he was to convert the Gentiles, and not give way to their errors. He was to contend with them and not give way an inch till he had driven them from their idolatry." Mr. Townsend had been specially primed by his wife that morning with vigorous hostility against Father Barney, and was grieved to his heart at finding that his young friend was prepared to take the priest's part in anything. In this matter of the roads Mr. Townsend was doubtless right, but hardly on the score of the arguments assigned by him. "I don't mean to say that there should be no road-making," said Herbert, after a pause. "The general opinion seems to be that we can't do better. I only say that we shall come to grief about it. Those poor fellows there have as much idea of cutting down a hill as I have; and it seems to me that the young lad whom I left with them has not much more." "They'll learn all in good time." "Let us hope it will be in good time." "If we once let them have the idea that we are to feed them in idleness," said Mr. Townsend, "they will want to go on for ever in the same way. And then, when they receive such immense sums in money wages, the priests will be sure to get their share. If the matter had been left to me, I would have paid the men in meal. I would never have given them money. They should have worked and got their food. The priest will get a penny out of every shilling; you'll see else." And so the matter was discussed between them as they went along to Gortnaclough. When they reached the room in which the committee was held they found Mr. Somers already in the chair. Priest McCarthy was there also, with his coadjutor, the Rev. Columb Creagh--Father Columb as he was always called; and there was a Mr. O'Leary from Boherbuy, one of the middlemen as they were formerly named,--though by the way I never knew that word to be current in Ireland; it is familiar to all, and was I suppose common some few years since, but I never heard the peasants calling such persons by that title. He was one of those with whom the present times were likely to go very hard. He was not a bad man, unless in so far as this, that he had no idea of owing any duty to others beyond himself and his family. His doctrine at present amounted to this, that if you left the people alone and gave them no false hopes, they would contrive to live somehow. He believed in a good deal, but he had no belief whatever in starvation,--none as yet. It was probable enough that some belief in this might come to him now before long. There were also one or two others; men who had some stake in the country, but men who hadn't a tithe of the interest possessed by Sir Thomas Fitzgerald.