Father Tom of Connemara

being so close to the mainland that it was occasionally taken for a peninsula. It was a wedding, and everyone was anxious to catch a first glimpse of the bride. Inside the house warring elements were busy. The guests, mostly fishermen from different parts of the coast, were quiet and expectant. Something had gone wrong. There was a hitch somewhere, but not among them. They had not come to fight but to enjoy themselves, and if, after a while, the liquor took effect, they would go home?oh, yes, they would go home and fight somewhere else, out of the reach of Dareen's arm, and of Father Tom's voice. Dareen was Beezey's eldest brother, and Father Tom?well, Father Tom was Father Tom. The groom was angry. He was talking loudly in the "parlor" and the door was closed, save to a favored few. He had been "sleeping it off," the men said, laughingly, meaning that a few glasses of native "whiska," taken prior to the ceremony, had overcome him because he was not used to it. "Galilee," facetiously named by a witty schoolmaster, was the best place on earth to go to in order to hear the greatest variety of accents in a given time. Fishermen from Donegal to the coast of Scotland, and from Conne- rnara to the coast of Clare and as far south as the Loop Head, not to speak of Frenchmen, half acclimated, carried traces of their origin on their tongues, and were apt to cause a stranger some confusion, till he became accustomed to them. The groom was from far Donegal, and t... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.