“Thrue for you; that's himself.” “And his family is well liked down here?” “I'll be bound they are. There's few like them to the fore.” Rather worried by the persistent assent he gave me, and seeing that I had no chance of deriving anything like an independent opinion from my courteous companion, I determined to try another line. After smoking a cigar and giving one to my friend, who seemed to relish it vastly, I said, as if incidentally, “Where I got that cigar, Paddy, the people are better off than here.” “And where's that, sir?” “In America, in the State of Virginia.” “That's as thrue as the Bible. It's elegant times they have there.” “And one reason is,” said I, “every man can do what he likes with his own. You have a bit of land here, and you dare n't plant tobacco; or if you sow oats or barley, you must n't malt it. The law says, 'You may do this, and you sha'n't do that;' and is that freedom, I ask, or is it slavery?” “Slavery,--devil a less,” said he, with a cut of his whip that made the horse plunge into the air. “And do you know why that's done? Do you know the secret of it all?” “Sorra a bit o' me.” “I'll tell you, then. It's to keep up the Church; it's to feed the parsons that don't belong to the people,--that's what they put the taxes on tobacco and whiskey for. What, I 'd like to know, do you and I want with that place there with the steeple? What does the Rev. Daniel Dudgeon do for you or me? Grind us,--squeeze us,--maybe, come down on us when we 're trying to scrape a few shillings together, and carry it off for tithes.” “Shure and he's a hard man! He's taking the herrins out of the net this year,--for every ten herrins he takes one.” “And do they bear that?” “Well, they do,” said he, mournfully; “they've no spirit down here; but over at Muggle-na-garry they put slugs in one last winter.” “One what?” “A parson, your honor; and it did him a dale o' good. He 's as meek as a child now about his dues, and they 've no trouble with him in life.” “They'll do that with Dudgeon yet, maybe?” asked I. “With the Lord's blessing, sir,” said he, piously. Satisfied now that it was not a very hopeful task to obtain much information about Ireland from such a source, I drew my hat over my eyes and affected to doze for the remainder of the journey. We arrived, at length, at the foot of a narrow road, impassable by the car, and here the driver told me I must descend and make the rest of my way on foot. “The house wasn't far,” he said; “only over the top of the hill in front of me,--about half-a-quarter of a mile away.”