“Have you a blank bill?” asked the priest.

“Eh?”

“Have you got a blank bill? or, sure we can send out for one.”

“For what?”

“For a blank bill.”

“A blank bill—­yes—­oh, ay—­fifty guineas!—­why, that’s half a hundre’.  God protect me! what am I about?  Well, well; there—­there—­there; now put it in your pocket;” and as he spoke he shoved it over hastily to the priest, as if he feared his good resolution might fail him at last.

“But about the bill, man alive?”

“Hang the bill—­deuce take all the bills that ever were drawn!  I’m the greatest ould fool that ever wore a head—­to go to allow myself to be made a—­a—.  Take your money away out of this, I bid you—­your money—­no, but my money.  I suppose I may bid farewell to it—­for so long as any one tells you a story of distress, and makes a poor mouth to you, so long you’ll get yourself into a scrape on their account.”

The priest had already put the money in his pocket, but he instantly took it out, and placed it once more on Corbet’s side of the table.

“There,” said he, “keep it.  I will receive no money that is lent in such a churlish and unchristian spirit.  And I tell you now, moreover, that if I do accept it, it must be on the condition of your listening to what I feel it my duty to say to you.  You, Anthony Corbet, have committed a black and deadly crime against the bereaved widow, against society, against the will of a merciful and—­take care that you don’t find him, too—­a just God.  It is quite useless for you to deny it; I have spoken the truth, and you know it.  Why will you not enable that heart-broken and kind lady—­whose whole life is one perpetual good action—­to trace and get back her son?”

“I can’t do it.”

“That’s a deliberate falsehood, sir.  Your conscience tells you it’s a he.  In your last conversation with me, at the Brazen Head, you as good as promised to do something of the kind in a couple of months.  That time and more has now passed, and yet you have done nothing.”

“How do you know that?”

“Don’t I know that the widow has got no trace of her child?  And right well I know that you could restore him to her if you wished.  However, I leave you now to the comfort of your own hardened and wicked heart.  The day will come soon when the black catalogue of your own guilt will rise up fearfully before you—­when a death-bed, with all its horrors, will startle the very soul within you by its fiery recollections.  It is then, my friend, that you will feel—­when it is too late—­what it is to have tampered with and despised the mercy of God, and have neglected, while you had time, to prepare yourself for His awful judgment.  Oh, what would I not do to turn your heart from the dark spirit of revenge that broods in it, and changes you into a demon!  Mark these words, Anthony.  They are spoken, God knows, with an anxious and earnest wish for your repentance, and, if neglected, they