“What is this I have been hearing?” thundered the little thick man, stamping on the floor.  “Is it possible that my senses deceive me? or have I heard and seen the daughter of my friend, my Orthodox—­once Orthodox—­friend, draw forth her idolatrous bawble from her American bosom, and defend its use and veneration with her tongue?  Is this true?  Tell me!  Speak!”

There was a short pause after this short declamation, delivered in the most passionate form.  At length, Mr. Prying, senior, coolly answered, “Yes, Mr. Gulmore, I ’spect Mary is lost to your church, and inclined to the Catholic system.”

“O Lord, forbid it!” cried the little thick man in white choker.  “It cannot be; we cannot allow it.  I shall storm heaven with prayers.  I shall do violence to the Lord.  I shall catch hold of him, and not let him go till he give back this lamb to my bosom.”

Such were only some of the expressions, blasphemously familiar, which this clerical mountebank made use of during a full half hour, that he almost electrified the whole company by his half-mad gesticulations and discourses.  At length, when his legs began to fail, he got on his knees, or rather on his heels—­a posture the Irish call “on his grugg.”  He prayed, and roared, and screamed, and he cried, as it were, shedding tears, to the alarm of the oldest members of the family, who feared he might burst a blood vessel, as he was a short-necked, plethoric, chunk of a man; and to the infinite amusement of Murty O’Dwyer and the younger members of the family, who, from the violence of the laughter that seized them, were in danger of meeting that fate from which the former wanted to save the parson.

This levity on the part of the youngsters did not escape the notice of his weeping reverence; and he no sooner recovered himself than he administered a sharp reprimand to all concerned, but especially to Murty.

“I pity men of your country,” said he, addressing Murty,—­who, it must be recollected, had made very great improvement in his education since we first introduced him to our readers,—­“I pity men of your country, on account of the ignorance in which they are kept by the soul-destroying system of Popery that binds them down.”

“Indeed, Mr. Gulmore,” said Murty, “I am sorry you don’t take some other means, besides those not very enlightened prayers you have volunteered to favor us with, to dispel and instruct our ignorance.”

“Why, thou Papist boor, durst thou deny the power of prayer?”

“No, sir.  I have great faith in prayer, especially the prayer of a ’just man;’ but God forbid that I should regard your eccentric, indeed, I might say blasphemous, effusions as prayer!  You talk of the ‘ignorance’ of my countrymen!  Ah, sir, I have no hesitation in saying the most ignorant among them would be ashamed of such silly-acting and disgusting cant as you have just now delivered.”