He maintains it as his own view of the sworn duty of a priest, and not unnaturally therefore he looks upon his sentence as a blow levelled at the clergy; nor, as I understood him, has he abandoned his original contention, that the Court had no right to summon him as a witness.

It was impossible to listen to him on this subject, and doubt his entire good faith, nor do I see that he ought to be held responsible for the interpretation put by Mr.Lane, M.P., and others upon his attitude as a priest, in a sense going to make him merely a "martyr" of Home Rule.

I did not gather from what he said that, in his mind, the question of his relations with the Nationalists or the Plan of Campaign entered into that affair at all, but simply that he believed the right and the duty of a priest to protect, no matter at what cost to himself, secrets confided to him as a priest, was really involved in his consent or refusal to answer, when he was asked whether he was or was not on a certain day at the "Mall House" in Youghal.

Of course from the connection of this refusal in this particular case with the Nationalist movement, Nationalists would easily glide into the idea that he refused to testify in order to serve their cause.
As to the troubles on the Ponsonby estate, Father Keller spoke very freely.

He divided the responsibility for them between the untractableness of the agent, and the absenteeism of the owner.