But, in the meantime, what is to be done?
I fear all the available sources of relief have been already exhausted, with the exception of heaven alone--in which, my children, we must not permit anything to shake our trust.

I am feeble, but yet I must go forth and try to secure some food for you, my poor famishing family: hold up, then, my dear children, even for a little, for certain I am that God will provide for us still." He was, accordingly, upon the point of going out, when John Purcel entered; and as the object of his visit is already known to the reader, we shall leave to his imagination the sense of the relief which it afforded.
This now is not an overdrawn picture of particular cases--and they were numerous--which occurred during the period of what was termed the Tithe rebellion.
The circumstance of the message to M'Mahon's, however, was the cause of a scene which we could not possiby omit, in a work treating of this peculiar and most distressing crisis.

As the boy Charles was on his way to M'Mahon's--and this he mentioned to the family afterwards--he was met, he said, by a gentleman dressed in rusty black, mounted upon a strong, coarse horse; and who, after looking at him with a good deal of surprise, said--"What is your name, my fine fellow ?" and on hearing it he asked him where he was going.

The child, who had been trained to nothing but truth; mentioned at once the object of his message; upon which the gentleman in question, after having heard it, thrust his hands into his smallclothes pocket, and then drew them out with an air of impatience, exclaiming--"Bad luck to it for poverty--it's the curse o' the counthry." Now this worthy priest, for such he was, had not been many weeks in the parish at the period of his meeting with the little boy; and it so happened, that his residence was within about a quarter of a mile of the glebe house.

He was, besides, one of the few who had given, upon more than one occasion, rather unequivocal manifestations of violent opposition to the whole system of tithes.