By this time the morning was tolerably advanced, and the neighbors were beginning to arrive in twos and threes, to wipe out old scores. Katty had sent several of the gorsoons “to see if they could see any sight of the clargy,” but hitherto their Reverences were invisible. At length, after several fruitless embassies of this description, Father Con was seen jogging along on his easygoing hack, engaged in the perusal of his Office, previous to his commencing the duties of the day. As soon as his approach was announced, a chair was immediately placed for him in a room off the kitchen--the parlor, such as it was, having been reserved for Father Phileniy himself, as the place of greater honor. This was an arrangement, however, which went against the grain of Phaddhy, who, had he got his will, would have established Father Con in the most comfortable apartment of the house: but that old vagabond, human nature, is the same under all circumstances--or, as Katty would have (in her own phraseology) expressed it, “still the ould cut;” for even there the influence of rank and elevation was sufficient to throw merit into the shade; and the parlor-seat was allotted to Father Philemy, merely for being Parish Priest, although it was well known that he could not “tare off” * mass in half the time that Father Con could, nor throw a sledge, or shoulder-stone within a perch of him, nor scarcely clear a street-channel, whilst the latter could jump one-and-twenty feet at a running leap. But these are rubs which men of merit must occasionally bear; and, when exposed to them, they must only rest satisfied in the consciousness of their own deserts. * The people look upon that priest as the best and most learned who can perform the ceremony of the mass in the shortest period of time. They call it as above “tareing off”. The quickest description of mass, however, is the “hunting mass,” so termed from the speed at which the priest goes over it--that is, “at the rate of a hunt.” From the moment that Father Con became visible, the conversation of those who were collected in Phaddhy's dropped gradually, as he approached the house, into a silence which was only broken by an occasional short observation, made by one or two of those who were in habits of the greatest familiarity with the priest; but when they heard the noise of his horse's feet near the door, the silence became general and uninterrupted.