suppose besides that it was this very heartless and oppressive man of wealth who, by his pride and tyranny, and unchristian vengeance, drove that poor man and his wretched family to the state I have painted them for you, in that cold and dreary hovel; suppose all this, I say, and that that wretched poor man, his heart bursting, and his brain whirling, stimulated by affection, goaded by hunger and indescribable misery; suppose, I say, that in the madness of despair he sallies out, and happens to meet the very individual who brought him and his to such a dreadful state—­do you think that he ought to let him pass—­”

“I see,” interrupted the officer, “without bleeding him; I knew you would come to that—­go along.”

“That he ought to let that wealthy oppressor pass, and allow the wife of his bosom and his gasping little ones to perish, whilst he knows that taking that assistance from him by violence which he ought to give freely would save them to society and him?  Mark me, I’m not justifying robbery.  Every general rule has its exception; and I’m only supposing a case where the act of robbery may be more entitled to compassion than to punishment—­but, as I said, I’m not defending it.”

“Ain’t you, faith?” replied the officer; “it looks devilish like it, though.  Don’t you think so, ma’am?”

“I never listens to no nonsense like that ere,” replied the lady.  “All I say is, that a gentleman as I’ve the honor of being acquainted with, ’as been robbed the other night of a pocket-book stuffed with banknotes, and a case of Hirish pistols that he kept to shoot robbers, and sich other wulgar wretches as is to be found nowhere but in Hireland.”

“Stuffed!” exclaimed the priest, disdainfully; “as much stuffed, ma’am, as you are.”

The officer’s very veins tingled with delight on hearing the admission which was involved in the simple priest’s exclamation.  He kept it, however, to himself, on account of the large reward that lay in the background.

“I stuffed!” exclaimed the indignant lady, whose thin face had for a considerable time been visible, for it was long past dawn; “I defy you, sir,” she replied, “you large, nasty, Hirish farmer, as feeds upon nothing but taters.  I stuffed!—­no lady—­you nasty farmer—­goes without padding, which is well known to any man as is a gentleman.  But stuffed!  I defy you, nasty Paddy; I was never stuffed.  Those as stuff use ’oss ’air; now I never uses ’oss ’air.”

“If you weren’t stuffed, then,” replied the priest, who took a natural disrelish to her affectation of pride and haughtiness, knowing her as he now did—­“many a better woman was.  If you weren’t, ma’am, it wasn’t your own fault.  Sir Thomas Gourlay’s English cook need never be at a loss for plenty to stuff herself with.”

This was an extinguisher.  The heaven of her complexion was instantly concealed by a thick cloud in the shape of a veil.  She laid herself back in the corner of the carriage, and maintained the silence of a vanquished woman during the remainder of the journey.