ticularly objectionable. Evidence was given that the prisoner had spoken to Brodrick, the builder, and Madden, the blacksmith, though neither of these facts was correct, as I was the culprit in both cases. Evidence was given that his notebook contained suspicious names and addresses, and that there was a most suspicious F. C. appended to some names not otherwise objectionable, letters which could surely mean nothing more or less than Fenian Centre. Evidence was also given that he had visited the abbey graveyard, and stayed a long time there without ostensible reason in company with suspicious characters, viz. Father MacPhilpin, the curate, and myself; and, finally, that he had entered the shops of three more suspicious persons, and had entries in his note-book referring to the late murders at Loughrea. This closed the inspector's case, and it was now Mr. George's turn to reply to it as best he could.

He began by asking the magistrate to dismiss it at once as a frivolous and foolish charge. But this he refused to do, saying that there seemed to be some ground for the inspector's suspicions. So Mr. George made a detailed statement, saying that he was the correspondent of an American

paper, and that the note-book was simply usedto found his letters upon; that his acquaintance was wide, and included men who might be called suspicious, whose names the inspector had picked out from several hundred others; that the suspicious letters were not F. C., but T. C., and were intended for Town Councillor instead of Fenian Centre; that he had visited the ruined abbey for the purpose of inspecting the ruins, and without knowing that the curate was a suspicious character; that he had not spoken either to Brodrick or Madden; that he had gone into suspicious shops with the harmless intention of buying a button, which button he bought at the last of the three, and now produced for the magistrate's inspection; that the entry in his note-book about the murders was for the same purpose as the very next entry about the bees and the vegetarians of the Carmelite Convent at Loughrea ; and, finally, that his pamphlet could not be judged by excerpted passages torn from their context, but that he would be happy to present every one in the room with a copy for perusal at their own leisure, which copies he accordingly handed round at once. This was his answer to the charge, and the magistrate was about to give

his decision, when Inspector Bell, who had been looking very much annoyed at the prospect of his prisoner's release, suggested that the entry in the note-book about bees, &c., might have been added after our first arrest, to give the book a more peaceable character, and that the prisoner might have known that one of the shops did not sell buttons. However, to his great chagrin the magistrate decided that, although there were grounds for his suspicion, the prisoner had cleared himself, and was accordingly discharged; and at precisely eleven o'clock we returned to our hotel, after Mr. George had been in custody for ten hours.

The next morning we made a more successful start for Galway, travelling with the parish priest of Athenry. He told us that we ought to have come to him for information instead of to his curate, as any friends of his were quite safe from the police, and that 'he cared no more for the peelers than he did for Queen Victoria of England.' He was very hard on the police as a body, declaring that they had all the vices of the military and none of their virtues. had seen some good fellows among them, but to this he replied, 'Sir, if you go down below, and

I said that I

shake the place well, you will find some good fellows, but as a class they are bad.' He was very indignant at the bad name which had been given to his parish, saying it was only owing to its proximity to Loughrea; as correspondents come to the hotel at Athenry, and with that as their head-quarters send descriptions to the papers of the state of the neighbouring district. As to his own parish, he asserted with great emphasis, 'Sorra an outrage has taken place in all Athenry since the creation of cats, and we all know they were made before Irishmen.'

We travelled through a stony, depopulated country, and at last arrived at Galway. In the afternoon we took a car and drove to a village in the neighbourhood, first watching the salmon waiting in numbers beneath the bridge to leap the falls and go up Lough Corrib. Just as we were driving out of the town, the young fellow who had called the car for us ran up and informed us in an impressive whisper that a man had just been at our hotel asking in what direction we had gone, and that that man was-a policeman. However, we did not disquiet ourselves for the matter, but drove on to our destination, where, while Mr. George went to see some people whose

friends he had known in America, I had an interview with the priest. He was, as usual, very courteous, and glad to give any information about the state of his parishioners. He said that, so

far from being idle, they worked like slaves, especially at this season of the year, beginning at 4 A.M. and going on till late in the evening. They were a very good set of people, and in all his large parish there had not been a case of immorality for the last forty years. They were poor, and some of them had to pay very high rents, though only one had been evicted, and he had been a tenant of the notorious Blake, who was murdered at Loughrea. His rent had been 177, though the valuation was only 47., and his land was too wet to feed sheep. He had kept a few cattle, but these he had sold one by one to pay the rent when the bad seasons came; and then he could pay nothing, and was promptly evicted. There were many tenants in this parish who owed several years' rent, and were quite unable to pay. The Arrears Bill would help most of them, but he knew one or two who could not take advantage of this, having nothing whatever; but to these he intended to lend a year's rent, and so give them a fresh start.