Summer or winter, fair weather or foul, people would come many and many a mile to hear him speak. At Over Darwen, where he had some fine meetings that October, he found that some of the poor folk had come in from a distance of "twenty-three miles; many had come ten to sixteen miles, some walking steadily over the 'tops' through the mist and rain, and having to leave home as early as six in the morning in order to get to us; one sturdy old man declaring that he never missed when I was within twenty-five miles of his home."[104] [Footnote 104: Of these Darwen lectures all the Preston papers gave long reports. The Conservative _Preston Herald_ thought that "the burning words of eulogium [on Mr Gladstone] that fell from the lips of the clever advocate" laid Mr Bradlaugh "open to the suspicion of having accepted a retainer and a brief from the astute statesman"! About 1200 persons attended each lecture, and the "quiet village of Darwen was rendered as throng as a fair" by the influx of people from so many of the surrounding villages.] I should like also to note here the open-mindedness shown about this time by a Catholic priest at Seghill. Mr Bradlaugh was to lecture in the colliery schoolroom on "The Land, the People, and the Coming Struggle," but almost at the last moment the authorities would have none of such a wicked man. Upon hearing this a Catholic priest named Father O'Dyer allowed the lecture to take place in his chapel at Annitsford, and he himself took the chair. Mr Bradlaugh, of course, greatly appreciated this unlooked-for kindness on the part of Father O'Dyer, though in his surprise at such unwonted conduct he might humorously comment "the age of miracles has recommenced." In December Mr Bradlaugh was in Lancashire--one Saturday at Middleton, the next day at Bury, where considerable excitement had been created by the burning of the _National Reformer_ in the Bury Reform Club by one of the members; on Monday at Accrington, where the lecture was followed by a three hours' drive in the night across country, over bad and slippery roads, to Preston to catch the London train. At Preston the station was locked up, but Mr Bradlaugh managed to get inside the porters' room, where there was happily a fire, by which he dozed until the train was due. Then six hours' rail in the frosty night, and back to city work for Tuesday morning. "Who will buy our bishopric?" he asked. But to this there was no reply. CHAPTER XXV. IRELAND. I am now come to a point in my father's history at which I must confess my utter inability to give anything like a just account of his work. All I can do--in spite of great time and labour almost fruitlessly spent in following up the slenderest clues--is to relate a few facts which must not be taken as a complete story, but merely as indicating others of greater importance. The reason for my ignorance will be found in Mr Bradlaugh's own words written in 1873:--