of guilt, that which was first adopted to lull the outcry of conscience, is supported by the pretended pride of principle.  Principle in a sceptic!  Hollow and devilish lie!  Would I have plunged into scepticism, had I not first violated the moral sanctions of religion?  Never.  I became an infidel, because I first became a villain!  Writhing under a load of guilt, that which I wished might be true I soon forced myself to think true:  and now”—­he here clenched his hands and groaned—­“now—­ay—­now—­and hereafter—­oh, that hereafter!  Why can I not shake the thoughts of it from my conscience?  Religion!  Christianity!  With all the hardness of an infidel’s heart I feel your truth; because, if every man were the villain that infidelity would make him, then indeed might every man curse God for his existence bestowed upon him—­as I would, but dare not do.  Yet why can I not believe?—­Alas! why should God accept an unrepentant heart?  Am I not a hypocrite, mocking him by a guilty pretension to his power, and leading the dark into thicker darkness?  Then these hands—­blood!—­broken vows!—­ha! ha! ha!  Well, go—­let misery have its laugh, like the light that breaks from the thunder-cloud.  Prefer Voltaire to Christ; sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind, as I have done—­ha, ha, ha!  Swim, world—­swim about me!  I have lost the ways of Providence, and am dark!  She awaits me; but I broke the chain that galled us:  yet it still rankles—­still rankles!”

The unhappy man threw himself into a chair in a paroxysm of frenzied agony.  For more than an hour he sat in the same posture, until he became gradually hardened into a stiff, lethargic insensibility, callous and impervious to feeling, reason, or religion—­an awful transition from a visitation of conscience so terrible as that which he had just suffered.  At length he arose, and by walking moodily about, relapsed into his usual gloomy and restless character.

When Bartley went home, he communicated to his wife Father Philip’s intention of calling on the following day, to hear a correct account of the Lianhan Shee.

“Why, thin,” said she, “I’m glad of it, for I intinded myself to go to him, any way, to get my new scapular consecrated.  How-an’-ever, as he’s to come, I’ll get a set of gospels for the boys an’ girls, an’ he can consecrate all when his hand’s in.  Aroon, Bartley, they say that man’s so holy that he can do anything—­ay, melt a body off the face o’ the earth, like snow off a ditch.  Dear me, but the power they have is strange all out!”

“There’s no use in gettin’ him anything to ate or dhrink,” replied Bartley; “he wouldn’t take a glass o’ whiskey once in seven years.  Throth, myself thinks he’s a little too dry; sure he might be holy enough, an’ yet take a sup of an odd time.  There’s Father Felix, an’ though we all know he’s far from bein’ so blessed a man as him, yet he has friendship an’ neighborliness in him, an’ never refuses a glass in rason.”