“Sorra matter, Nancy dheelish, we’ll take with all that—­just try your hand at a slice of it.  I rode eighteen miles since I dined, and I feel a craving, Nancy, a whacuum in my stomach, that’s rather troublesome.”

“To be sure, Father Ned, you must get a slice, with all the veins in my heart; but I thought maybe you wouldn’t like it so fresh:  but what on earth will we do for eggs? for there’s not an egg under the roof with me.”

“Biddy, a hagur,” said Father Ned, “just slip out to Molshy Johnson, and tell her to send me six eggs for a rasher, by the same token that I heard two or three hens cackling in the byre, as I was going to conference this morning.”

“Well, Docthor,” said Pat Frayne, when Biddy had been gone some time, on which embassy she delayed longer than the priest’s judgment, influenced by the cravings of his stomach, calculated to be necessary,—­“Well, Docthor, I often pity you, for fasting so long; I’m sure, I dunna how you can stand it, at all, at all.”

“Troth, and you may well wonder, Pat; but we have that to support us, that you, or any one like you, know nothing about—­inward support, Pat—­inward support.”

“Only for that, Father Ned,” said Shane Fadh, “I suppose you could never get through with it.”

“Very right, Shane—­very right:  only for it, we never could do.—­What the dickens is keeping this girl with the eggs?—­why she might be at Mr. Morrow’s, here, since.  By the way, Mr. Morrow,” he continued, laughing, “you must come over to our church:  you’re a good neighbor, and a worthy fellow, and it’s a thousand pities you should be sent down.”

“Why, Docthor,” said Andy, “do you really believe I’ll go downwards?”

“Ah, Mr. Morrow, don’t ask me that question—­out of the pale, you know—­out of the pale.”

“Then you think, sir, there’s no chance for me, at all?” said Andy, smiling.

“Not the laste, Andy, you must go this way,” said Father Ned, striking the floor with the butt end of his whip, and winking—­“to the lower raigons; and, upon my knowledge, to tell you the truth, I’m sorry for it, for you’re a worthy fellow.”

“Ah, Docthor,” said Ned, “it’s a great thing entirely to be born of the true church—­one’s always sure, then.”

“Ay, ay; you may say that, Ned,” returned the priest, “come or go what will, a man’s always safe at the long run, except he dies without his clargy.—­Shane, hand me the jug, if you please.—­Where did you get this stuff, Nancy?—­faith, it’s excellent.”

“You forget, Father Ned, that that’s a secret.——­But here’s Biddy with the eggs, and now you’ll have your rasher in no time.”

When the two clergymen had discussed the rashers and eggs, and while the happy group were making themselves intimately acquainted with a fresh jug of punch, as it circulated round the table—­

“Now, sir,” said Father Ned to the stranger, “we’ll hear your story with the greatest satisfaction possible; but I think you might charge your tumbler before you set to it.”