"And if among you all, that are so set up against him because he's not one of your own set, you dhrive him out of Ballycloran, I can tell you, I'll not remain in it!"
"Then your sins and your sorrows must be on your own head!"
And without saying anything further, Father John took his hat, and walked off. Feemy snatched her novel into her lap, to show how little what was said impressed her, and resumed her attitude over the fire. But she didn't read; her spirit was stubborn and wouldn't bend, but her reason and her conscience were touched by what the priest had said to her, and the bitter thought for the first time came over her, that her lover, perhaps, was not so true to her, as she to him. There she sat, sorrowfully musing; and though she did not repent of what she thought her own firmness, she was bitterly tormented by the doubts with which her brother, Mary Brady, and the priest, had gradually disturbed her happiness.
She loved Ussher as well as ever--yes, almost more than ever, as the idea that she might perhaps lose him came across her--but she began to be discontented with herself, and to think that she had not played her part as well as she might. In fact, she felt herself to be miserable, and, for the time, hated her brother and Father John for having made her so.
Father John walked sorrowfully back to his cottage, thinking Miss Feemy Macdermot the most stiff-necked young lady it had ever been his hard lot to meet.
We must now request our reader to accompany us to the little town of Mohill; not that there is anything attractive in the place to repay him for the trouble of going there.
Mohill is a small country town, standing on no high road, nor on any thoroughfare from the metropolis; and therefore it owes to itself whatever importance it may possess--and, in truth, that is not much. It is, or, at any rate, was, at the time of which we are writing, the picture of an impoverished town--the property of a non-resident landlord--destitute of anything to give it interest or prosperity--without business, without trade, and without society. The idea that would strike one on entering it was chiefly this: "Why was it a town at all?--why were there, on that spot, so many houses congregated, called Mohill?--what was the inducement to people to come and live there?--Why didn't they go to Longford, to Cavan, to Carrick, to Dublin,--anywhere rather than there, when they were going to settle themselves?" This is a question which proposes itself at the sight of many Irish towns; they look so poor, so destitute of advantage, so unfriended. Mohill is by no means the only town in the west of Ireland, that strikes one as being there without a cause.