Chapter 8 - Page 2

month, or more, sin' you seen it, and the priest will think you have
forgotten him, and go away offended."

"Och! It's such a praist, as the likes of yees has no nade of
throubling! Yer conscience is aisy, Misther Straddle, so that yer belly
is filled, and yer wages is paid. Bad luck o sich religion!"

The allusion of Joel related to a practice of Michael's that is
deserving of notice. It seems that the poor fellow, excluded by his
insulated position from any communication with a priest of his own
church, was in the habit of resorting to a particular rock in the
forest, where he would kneel and acknowledge his sins, very much as he
would have done had the rock been a confessional containing one
authorized to grant him absolution. Accident revealed the secret, and
from that time Michael's devotion was a standing jest among the
dissenters of the valley. The county Leitrim-man was certainly a little
too much addicted to Santa Cruz, and he was accused of always visiting
his romantic chapel after a debauch. Of course, he was but little
pleased with Joel's remark on the present occasion; and being, like a
modern newspaper, somewhat more vituperative than logical, he broke out
as related.

"Jamie," continued Joel, too much accustomed to Mike's violence to heed
it, "it does seem to me a hardship to be obliged to frequent a church
of which a man's conscience can't approve. Mr. Woods, though a native
colonist, is an Old England parson, and he has so many popish ways
about him, that I am under considerable concern of _mind_"--
concern, of _itself_, was not sufficiently emphatic for one of
Joel's sensitive feelings--"I am under considerable _concern of
mind_ about the children. They _sit under_ no other preaching;
and, though Lyddy and I do all we can to gainsay the sermons, as soon
as meetin' is out, some of it _will_ stick. You may worry the best
Christian into idolatry and unbelief, by parseverance and falsehood.
Now that things look so serious, too, in the colonies, we ought to be
most careful."

Jamie did not clearly understand the application of the present state
of the colonies, nor had he quite made up his mind, touching the merits
of the quarrel between parliament and the Americans. As between the
Stuarts and the House of Hanover, he was for the former, and that
mainly because he thought them Scotch, and it was surely a good thing
for a Scotchman to govern England; but, as between the _Old_
countries and the _New_, he was rather inclined to think the
rights of the first ought to predominate; there being something opposed
to natural order, agreeably to his notions, in permitting the reverse
of this doctrine to prevail. As for presbyterianism,