There they stood, exact counterparts, each a thousand times more anxious to damn the other than to save himself.  They were not long, however, in discovering each other, and in a moment the jargon of controversy rang loud and high amidst the uproar and confusion of the place.  The Protestant saint attributed all the iniquity by which the land, he said, was overflowed, and the judgments under which it was righteously suffering, to the guilt of our rulers, who forgot God, and connived at Popery.

The Popish saint, on the other hand, asserted that so long as a fat and oppressive heresy was permitted to trample upon the people, the country could never prosper.  The other one said, that idolatry—­Popish idolatry—­was the cause of all; and that it was the scourge by which “the Lord” was inflicting judicial punishment upon the country at large.  If it were not for that he would not be in such a sink of iniquity at that moment.  Popish idolatry it was that brought him there; and the abominations of the Romish harlot were desolating the land.

The other replied, that perhaps she was the only harlot of the kind he would run away from; and maintained, that until all heresy was abolished, and rooted out of the country, the curse of God would sit upon them, as the corrupt law church does now in the shape of an overgrown nightmare.  What brought him, who was ready to die for his persecuted church, here?  He could tell the heretic;—­it was Protestant ascendancy, and he could prove it;—­yes, Protestant ascendancy, and nothing else, was it that brought him to that house, its representative, in which he now stood.  He maintained that it resembled a watch-house; was it not full of wickedness, noise, and blasphemy; and were there any two creeds; in it that agreed together, and did not fight like devils?

How much longer this fiery discussion might have proceeded it is difficult to say.  The constable of the night, finding that the two hypocritical vagabonds were a nuisance to the whole place, had them handcuffed together, and both placed in the black hole to finish their argument.

In short, there was around the good man—­vice, with all her discordant sounds and hideous aspects, clanging in his ear the multitudinous din that arose from the loud and noisy tumult of her brutal, drunken, and debauched votaries.

The priest, who respected his cloth and character, did not lay aside his jock, nor expose himself to the coarse jests and ruffianly insolence with which the vagabond minions of justice were in those days accustomed to treat their prisoners.  He inquired if he could get a person to carry a message from him to a man named Corbet, living at 25 Constitution Hill; adding, that he would compensate him fairly.  On this, one of those idle loungers or orderlies about such places offered himself at once, and said he would bring any message he wished, provided he forked out in the first instance.

“Go, then,” said the priest, handing him a piece of silver, “to No. 25 Constitution Hill, where a man named Corbet—­what am I saying—­Dunphy, lives, and tell him to come to me immediately.”