Willy Reilly and His Dear Colleen Bawn Author:William Carleton General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1895 Original Publisher: New York Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select... more » from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER VII. AN ACCIDENTAL INCIDENT FAVORABLE TO REILLY, AND A CURIOUS CONVERSATION. We return to the party from whom Fergus Reilly had so narrow an escape. As our readers may expect, they bent their steps to the magnificent residence of Sir Robert White- craft. That gentleman was alone in his library, surrounded by an immense collection of books which he never read. He had also a fine collection of paintings, of which he knew no more than his butler, nor perhaps so much. At once sensual, penurious, and bigoted, he spent his whole time in private profligacy -- for he was a hypocrite, too -- in racking his tenantry, and exhibiting himself as a champion for Protestant principles. Whenever an unfortunate Roman Catholic, whether priest or layman, happened to infringe a harsh or cruel law of which probably he had never heard, who so active in collecting his myrmidons, in order to uncover, hunt, and run down his luckless victim ? And yet he was not popular. No one, whether of his own class or any other, liked a bone in his skin. Nothing could infect him with the genial and hospitable spirit of the country, whilst at the same time no man living was so anxious to partake of the hospitality of others, merely because it saved him a meal. All that sustained his character at the melancholy period of which we write was what people called the uncompromising energy of his principles as a sound and vigorous Protestant. " Sink them all together," he exclaimed upon this occasion, in a sort of soliloquy -- " Church and bishop and parson, what are they worth unless to make the best use we ...« less