deficiency. Reader, I leave you to your thoughts, and only add that the sleek dogs of Arranmore were my horror, if not my hatred, and have stamped on my mind images which can never be effaced.
We made our first call at the door of the chapel; the fat surly-looking priest was standing there; and, saying to him, "Your people, sir, are in a bad state." "Bad enough, they give me nothing." " Why should they?—you cannot expect or ask anything of the poor starving creatures." The curate withdrew, leaving the battle to be decided by the priest, pilot, and myself, for he had known him before. "Ah," said the pilot, softly, "he's a hard one; there's the Christian for you," pointing to the curate, "he's the man that has the pitiful heart,—not a cratur on the island but would lay down the life for him.". This pilot was a Roman Catholic, but that characteristic impartiality, peculiar to the Irish, where justice and mercy are concerned, belonged to him likewise. We went from cabin to cabin, till I begged the curate to show me no more. Not in a solitary instance did one beg. When we entered their dark, smoky, floorless abodes, made darker by the glaring of a bright sun, which had been shining upon us, they stood up before us in a speechless, vacant, staring, stupid, yet most eloquent posture, mutely graphically saying, "Here we are, your bone and your flesh, made in God's image, like you. Look at us! What brought us here? May God forgive me, and I believe he will, or I would not say it. With Job, I said, "Let darkness and the shadow of death stain that day when first the potato was planted
