“Maybe, Mogue,” they replied, “if you were widout your breakfast, as we are, you wouldn’t say so.”

“Why, did’nt yez get your breakfasts yet?”

“Devil a morsel.”

“Well, to them that didn’t get their breakfasts I have another word to say.”

“What is it, Mogue?”

“Why, have patience—­ever and always when you’re hungry, have patience, and you’ll find it a great relief; it’ll fill you and keep you in good condition—­that I mayn’t sin but it will!  But, sure, I’ve got news for yez, boys,” he added; “Masther John bid me tell you that, after about a month or so it’ll be contrary to law to get hungry:  there’s an act o’ parliament goin’ to be made against it, you see; so that any villain disloyal enough to get hungry, if it’s proved against him, will be liable to transportation.  That I mayn’t sin but it’ll be a great comfort for the country—­I mane, to have hunger made contrary to act o’ parliament.”

Mogue Moylan was, indeed, a fellow of a very original and peculiar character.  Grave, sly, and hypocritical, yet apparently quiet and not susceptible of strong or vehement emotions, he was, nevertheless, more suggestive of evil designs and their fulfilment than any man, perhaps, in his position of life that ever existed.  Though utterly without spirit, or the slightest conception of what personal courage meant, the reader not be surprised that he was also vindictive, and consequently treacherous and implacable.  He could project crime and outrage with a felecity of diabolical invention that was almost incredible.  He was, besides, close and cautious, unless when he thought that he could risk a falsehood with safety; and, in the opinion of some few who knew him, not merely dishonest, but an actual thief.  His manner, too, was full of plausible assumption of great conscientiousness and simplicity.  He seemed always calm and cool, was considered rather of a religious turn, and always expressed a strong horror against cursing or swearing in any shape.  Indeed he had a pat anecdote, which he occasionally told, of a swoon or faint into which he usually fell, when a youth of about nineteen, in consequence of having been forced to take a book oath, for the first time, another act against which he entertained a peculiar antipathy.  Now, all this was indeed very singular and peculiar; but he accounted for it by the scrupulous love of truth with which not only he himself, but his whole family, many of whom he said had given their lives for their country, were affected.  The only foible that could be brought to the charge of honest Mogue, was a singular admiration for his own visage, which he never omitted to survey with remarkable complacency several times a day in a broken piece of looking, glass, which he kept for that especial purpose.  This, and its not unnatural consequences a belief that almost ever female who spoke to him with civility was smitten by his face and figure, constituted the only two weaknesses in a character otherwise so