A sergeant of police walked up as the train was about to start, and asked-- "Are you not Father M'Fadden of Gweedore ?" "What interest have you in my identity ?" responded the priest.
"Only this, sir," said the officer, politely exhibiting a warrant.
"I had been in Armagh the previous day," said Father M'Fadden, "attending the month's memory of the late deceased Primate of All Ireland, Dr.M'Gettigan, and stayed at a private residence, that of Surgeon-Major Lavery, not suspecting that while enjoying the genial hospitality of the Surgeon-Major my steps were dogged by a detective, and that gentleman's house watched by police." Of the trial Father M'Fadden spoke with more bitterness.

His eyes glowed as he exclaimed, "Can you imagine that they refused me bail, when bail had been allowed to such a felon as Arthur Orton?
Why should I have been locked up over two Sundays, for ten days, when I offered to pledge my honour to appear ?" He made no other complaint of the magistrate, and none of the prosecutor, Mr.Ross.He praised his own lawyer, too, but he strongly denounced the stenographer who took down his speech, or the parts of it which I told him I had seen in Dublin.
"Why, just think of it," he exclaimed; "it took the clerk just eight minutes to read the report given by that stenographer of a speech which it took me an hour and twenty minutes to deliver! I do not speak from the lips, I speak from the heart, and consequently rather rapidly; and a stenographer who can take down 190 words a minute has told me I run ahead of him!" I suggested that the report, without pretending even to be a full summary of his speech, might be accurate as to phrases and sentences pronounced by him.
"Yes, as to phrases," he answered, "that might be; but the phrases may be taken out of their true connection, and strung together in an untruthful, yet telling way.

Even my words were not fully set down," he said, with some heat.

"I was made to call a man 'level,' when I said in the American way that he was 'level-headed.'" _A propos_ of this, I am told that the American word "spree" has become Hibernian, and is used to describe meetings of the National League and "other political entertainments." When I told Father M'Fadden I had just come from Rome, where, as I had reason to believe, the Vatican was anxious to get evidence from others than Archbishop Walsh and Monsignore Kirby, of the Irish College, as to the attitude of the priests in Ireland towards the laws of the United Kingdom, he said he knew that "some Italian prelates neither understood nor approved the 'Plan of Campaign,' nor is the Irish Land question understood at Rome;" but this did not seem to disturb him much, as he was quite sure that in the end the "Plan of Campaign" would be legalised by the British Government.

"I think I see plainly," he said, "that Lord Ernest's government is fast going to pieces, though I can't expect him to admit it!" Lord Ernest laughed good-naturedly, and said that Father M'Fadden saw more in Donegal than he (Lord Ernest) was able to see in Westminster.