“What objection have you to come now?” asked the priest.  “Never put off till tomorrow what can be done to-day, is a good old proverb, and applies to things of weightier importance than belong to this world.”

“Why, then, it’s a little business of a very particular nature that I have to attend to; and yet I don’t know,” he added, “maybe I’ll be a betther match for them afther seeing you.  In the mane time,” he proceeded, addressing his wife, “if they should come here to look for me, don’t say where I’m gone, nor, above all things, who I’m with.  Mark that now; and tell Charley, or Ginty, whichever o’ them comes, that it must be put off till to-morrow—­do you mind, now?”

She merely nodded her head, by way of attention.

“Ay,” he replied, with a sardonic grin, “you’ll be alive, as you were a while ago, I suppose.”

They then proceeded on their way to the Brazen Head, which they reached without any conversation worth recording.

“Now, Anthony,” began the priest, after they had seated themselves comfortably in a private room, “will you answer me truly why you refused seeing me? why you hid or absconded whenever I went to your house for the last week?”

“Bekaise I did not wish to see you, then.”

“Well, that’s the truth,” said the priest, “and I know it.  But why did you not wish to see me?” he inquired; “you must have had some reason for it.”

“I had my suspicions.”

“You had, Anthony; and you’ve had the same suspicions this many a long year—­ever since the day I saw you pass through the hall in the private mad-house in—.”

“Was that the time Mr. Quin was there? asked Anthony, unconsciously committing himself from the very apprehension of doing so by giving a direct answer to the question.

“Ah! ha!  Anthony, then you knew Mr. Quin was there.  That will do; but there’s not the slightest use in beating about the bush any longer.  You have within the last half-hour let your secret out, within my own ears, and before my own eyes.  And so you have a pension from the Black Baronet; and you, an old man, and I fear a guilty one, are receiving the wages of iniquity and corruption from that man—­from the man that first brought shame and everlasting disgrace, and guilt and madness into and upon your family and name—­a name that had been without a stain before.  Yes; you have sold yourself as a slave—­a bond-slave—­have become the creature and instrument of his vices—­the clay in his hands that he can mould as he pleases, and that he will crush and trample on, and shiver to pieces, the moment his cruel, unjust, and diabolical purposes are served.”

Anthony’s face was a study, but a fearful study, whilst the priest spoke.  As the reverend gentleman went on, it darkened into the expression of perfect torture; he gasped and started as if every word uttered had given him a mortal stab; his keen old eye nickered with scintillations of unnatural and turbid fire, until the rebuke was ended.