"That is hard to determine, seeing those that claim to be contradict
each other so."
"What good then can there be in wanting to be learned?"
"You get the mental discipline of study."
"It seems to me," said Donal, "a pity to get a body's discipline on
what may be worthless. It's just as good discipline to my teeth to
dine on bread and cheese, as it would be to exercise them on sheep's
grass."
"I've got hold of a humorist!" said the clergyman to himself.
Donal picked up his wallet and his book, and came down to the road.
Then first the clergyman saw that he was barefooted. In his
childhood he had himself often gone without shoes and stockings, yet
the youth's lack of them prejudiced him against him.
"It must be the fellow's own fault!" he said to himself. "He shan't
catch me with his chaff!"
Donal would rather have forded the river, and gone to inquire his
way at the nearest farm-house, but he thought it polite to walk a
little way with the clergyman.
"How far are you going?" asked the minister at length.
"As far as I can," replied Donal.
"Where do you mean to pass the night?"
"In some barn perhaps, or on some hill-side."
"I am sorry to hear you can do no better."
"You don't think, sir, what a decent bed costs; and a barn is
generally, a hill-side always clean. In fact the hill-side 's the
best. Many's the time I have slept on one.
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