“Is the thing in it, Art?”

“No; ‘tis nothin’ but the law Bible, the magistrate’s own one.”

To this the querist would reply, with a satisfied nod of the head, “Oh is that all?  I heard they war to have it;” on which he would push himself through the crowd until he reached the table, where he took his oath as readily as another.

“Jem Hartigan,” said the magistrate to one of those persons, “are you to swear?”

“Faix, myself doesn’t know, your honor; only that I hard them say that the Cassidys mintioned our names along wid many other honest people; an’ one wouldn’t, in that case, lie under a false report, your honor, from any one, when we’re as clear as them that never saw the light of anything of the kind.”

The magistrate then put the book into his hand, and Jem, in return, fixed his eye, with much apparent innocence, on his face:  “Now, Jem Hartigan,” etc, etc., and the oath was accordingly administered.  Jem put the book to his mouth, with his thumb raised to an acute angle on the back of it; nor was the smack by any means a silent one which he gave it (his thumb).

The magistrate set his ear with the air of a man who had experience in discriminating such sounds.  “Hartigan,” said he, “you’ll condescend to kiss the book, sir, if you please:  there’s a hollowness in that smack, my good fellow, that can’t escape me.”

“Not kiss it, your honor? why, by this staff in my hand, if ever a man kissed”—­

“Silence! you impostor,” said the curate; “I watched you closely, and am confident your lips never touched the book.”

“My lips never touched the book!—­Why, you know I’d be sarry to conthradict either o’ yez; but I was jist goin’ to obsarve, wid simmission, that my own lips ought to know best; an’ don’t you hear them tellin’ you that they did kiss it?” and he grinned with confidence in their faces.

“You double-dealing reprobate!” said the parish priest, “I’ll lay my whip across your jaws.  I saw you, too, an’ you did not kiss the book.”

“By dad, an’ maybe I did not, sure enough,” he replied:  “any man may make a mistake unknownst to himself; but I’d give my oath, an’ be the five crasses, I kissed it as sure as—­however, a good thing’s never the worse o’ bein’ twice done, gintlemen; so here goes, jist to satisfy yez;” and, placing the book near, his mouth, and altering his position a little, he appeared to comply, though, on the contrary, he touched neither it nor his thumb.  “It’s the same thing to me,” he continued, laying down the book with an air of confident assurance; “it’s the same thing to me if I kissed it fifty times over, which I’m ready to do if that doesn’t satisfy yez.”

As every man acquitted himself of the charges brought against him, the curate immediately took down his name.  Indeed, before the clearing commenced, he requested that such as were to swear would stand together within the ring, that, after having sworn, he might hand each of them a certificate of the fact, which they appeared to think might be serviceable to them, should they happen to be subsequently indicted for the same crime in a court of justice.  This, however, was only a plan to keep them together for what was soon to take place.