“Well, about to-morrow,” observed Kenny—­“ha, ha, ha!—­there’ll be lots o’ swearin’—­Why the whole parish is to switch the primer; many a thumb and coat-cuff will be kissed in spite of priest or magistrate.  I remimber once, when I was swearin’ an alibi for long Paddy Murray, that suffered for the M’Gees, I kissed my thumb, I thought, so smoothly, that no one would notice it; but I had a keen one to dale with, so says he, ‘You know for the matther o’ that, my good fellow, that you have your thumb to kiss every day in the week,’ says he, ’but you might salute the book out o’ dacency and good manners; not,’ says he, ‘that you an’ it are strangers aither; for, if I don’t mistake, you’re an ould hand at swearin’ alibis.’

“At all evints, I had to smack the book itself, and it’s I, and Barney Green, and Tim Casserly, that did swear stiffly for Paddy, but the thing was too clear agin him.  So he suffered, poor fellow, an’ died right game, for he said over his dhrop—­ha, ha, ha!—­that he was as innocent o’ the murder as a child unborn:  an’ so he was in one sinse, bein’ afther gettin’ absolution.”

“As to thumb-kissin’,” observed the elder Meehan; “let there be none of it among us to-morrow; if we’re caught at it ’twould be as bad as stayin’ away altogether; for my part, I’ll give it a smack like a pistol-shot—­ha, ha, ha!”

“I hope they won’t bring the priest’s book,” said Denis.  “I haven’t the laste objection agin payin’ my respects to the magistrate’s paper, but somehow I don’t like tastin’ the priest’s in a falsity.”

“Don’t you know,” said the Big Mower, “that with a magistrate’s present, it’s ever an’ always only the Tistament by law that’s used.  I myself wouldn’t kiss the mass-book in a falsity.”

“There’s none of us sayin’ we’d do it in a lie,” said the elder Meehan; “an’ it’s well for thousands that the law doesn’t use the priest’s book; though, after all, aren’t there books that say religion’s all a sham?  I think myself it is; for if what they talk about justice an’ Providence is thrue, would Tom Dillon be transported for the robbery we committed at Bantry?  Tom, it’s true, was an ould offender; but he was innocent of that, any way.  The world’s all chance; boys, as Sargint Eustace used to say, and whin we die there’s no more about us; so that I don’t see why a man mightn’t as well switch the priest’s book as any other, only that, somehow, a body can’t shake the terror of it off o’ them.”

“I dunna, Anthony, but you and I ought to curse that sargint; only for him we mightn’t be as we are, sore in our conscience, an’ afeard of every fut we hear passin’,” observed Denis.

“Spake for your own cowardly heart, man alive,” replied Anthony; “for my part, I’m afeared o’ nothin’.  Put round the glass, and don’t be nursin’ it there all night.  Sure we’re not so bad as the rot among the sheep, nor the black leg among the bullocks, nor the staggers among the horses, any how; an’ yet they’d hang us up only for bein’ fond of a bit o’ mate—­ha, ha, ha!”