John Brien looked from one side of the road to the other, and ahead, between his donkey's ears. The mist was close round the cart as the walls of a room; the only sound was the thin wind singing in the telegraph wires. "Mrs. Twomey," murmured John Brien, "the Clergy is agin him!" "Oh, great and merciful Lord God!" said Mrs. Twomey. She said it without either irreverence or reverence. She merely wished to express to John Brien her comprehension of the importance of his statement. Larry had flung himself into electioneering as an alternative to drink. That was how he put it to himself. He took rooms at Hallinan's Hotel, in Cluhir, in order to be on top of the railway station, and the situation generally, and he had, moreover, a standing invitation to No. 6, The Mall, for any meal, at any hour of the day or night, that he found suitable. The district to be canvassed was a wide one, and day after day Larry and the faithful Barty went forth to interview "People of importance"; darkly-cautious publicans, with wives lurking at hand to make sure that "Himself" should do nothing rash; uninterested farmers, who "had their land bought," and were left cold by the differences 'twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee; and visits to "The Clergy" of all denominations, productive of much artificially friendly converse and no very definite promises. Of Larry's own Communion, Father Tim Sweeny alone announced himself, unhesitatingly, as being of Larry's camp. Father Tim's hostility had not been proof against Larry's charms, more especially since these were combined with a substantial proof of the young candidate's interest in the decoration of the new chapel; and, at the gate of that chapel, (the site of which he did not forget that he owed to Larry) he attended one of Larry's meetings, and shook his bovine head at his flock, and bellowed ferocious commendation of the young man, who, he thundered, had not failed in his duty by the Church and the people. There was a downright, fighting quality in Father Sweeny that was large and stimulating. Larry felt that he had, at least, his own parish firmly at his back, and wished that he had a few more such as Father Tim to stand by him. The Rev. Matthew Cotton (stiffened by Mrs. Cotton) said that to enter a hustings for a Home Ruler, of any variety, would be for him an unauthorised bowing down in the House of Rimmon, a simile that conveyed little to Larry, and nothing at all, allegorically, to his agent, Barty Mangan, though its practical interpretation presented no difficulties to either of them. The Reverend Mr. Armstrong, Pastor of the Methodists, admitted to a preference for an "All-for-Irelander," as opposed to an Official Nationalist; but evaded the responsibility of a promise by saying that he would lay the matter before the Lord, and would write later.