“Holdback,” said Harman, in a voice which made the man start, whilst with a firm tread and resolute eye, he stood face to face before him; “hold back, and dare not violate that sacred and awful privilege, which in every country and creed under heaven is sufficient to protect the defenceless dead.  What can be your object in this? are you men—­have you the spirit, the courage, of men?  If you are human beings, is not the sight of that unhappy fellow-creature—­I hope he is happy now,—­stretched out in death before you, sufficient, by the very stillness of departed life, to calm the brutal frenzy of your passions!  Have you common courage?  No; I tell you to your teeth that none but spiritless caitiffs and cowards would, in the presence of death and sorrow—­in the miserable cabin of the destitute widow and her orphan boy—­exhibit the ruffianly outrages of men who are wanton in their cruelty, merely because they know there is none to resist them; and I may add, because they think that their excesses, however barbarous, will be shielded by higher authority.  No, I tell you, if there stood man for man before you, even without arms in their hands, you would not dare to act and swagger as you do, or to play these cruel pranks of oppression and tyranny anywhere, much less in the house of death and affliction.  Fie upon you, you are a disgrace to everything that is human, a reproach to every feeling of manhood, and every principle of religion.”

Hardened as they were by the habits of their profligate and debasing employment, such was the ascendancy of manly truth and and moral feeling over them, that for a minute or two they quailed under the indignant glance of Harman.  Steele drew back his gun, and looked round on his companions to ascertain their feeling.

“Gentleman,” said Father Roche, anxious to mollify them as much as he could—­“gentleman, for the sake of that poor heart-broken widowed woman and her orphan son—­for her and his sake, and if not for theirs then, for the sake of God himself, before whose awful judgment-seat we must all stand to render an account of our works, I entreat—­I implore you to withdraw—­do, gentlemen, and leave her and her children to their sorrows and their misery, for the world has little else for them.”

“I’m willing to go,” said a fellow, ironically called Handsome Hacket, because he was blind of an eye and deeply pock-pitted—­“there’s no use in quarrellin’ with a woman certainly—­and I don’t think there can be any doubt about the man’s death; devil a bit.”

“Well said, Vainus,” exclaimed Sharpe, “and it is not ten days since we were defrauded of Parra Rackan who escaped from us in Jemmy Reilly’s coffin—­when we thought to nab him in the wakehouse—­and when we went away didn’t they set him at large, and then go back to bury the man that was dead.  Now, how da you know, Vainus, my purty boy, that this fellow’s not playin’ us a trick o’ the same color?”

“Come, come,” said another of them who had not yet spoke, “it’s aisy to know that.  Curse me, Steele, if you don’t give him a tickle, I will—­that’s all—­we’re losin’ the day and I want my breakfast Living or dead, and be hanged to him, I’m starved for want of something to eat—­and to drink, too—­so be quick I tell you.”