But when silence came, to the surprise of the company he submitted, though with manifest trepidation, and told them that he would sing as the company desired.  It was a song from a good old writer upon fasting in Lent, and was, in fact, a reproof to all hypocrisy.  Hereupon there was a great ringing of glasses and a jolly round of laughter rose up in the cheer that welcomed the announcement.  Father Roach looked queer and disconcerted, and shot a look of suspicion at Devereux, for poor Dan Loftus had, in truth, hit that divine strait in a very tender spot.

The fact is, Father Roach was, as Irish priests were sometimes then, a bit of a sportsman.  He and Toole used occasionally to make mysterious excursions to the Dublin mountains.  He had a couple of mighty good dogs, which he lent freely, being a good-natured fellow.  He liked good living and jolly young fellows, and was popular among the officers, who used to pop in freely enough at his reverence’s green hall-door whenever they wanted a loan of his dogs, or to take counsel of the ghostly father (whose opinion was valued more highly even than Toole’s) upon the case of a sick dog or a lame nag.

Well, one morning—­only a few weeks before—­Devereux and Toole together had looked in on some such business upon his reverence—­a little suddenly—­and found him eating a hare!—­by all the gods, it was—­hare-pie in the middle of Lent!

It was at breakfast.  His dinner was the meal of an anchorite, and who would have guessed that these confounded sparks would have bounced into his little refectory at that hour of the morning?  There was no room for equivocation; he had been caught in the very act of criminal conversation with the hare-pie.  He rose with a spring, like a Jack-in-a-box, as they entered, and knife and fork in hand, and with shining chops, stared at them with an angry, bothered, and alarmed countenance, which increased their laughter.  It was a good while before he obtained a hearing, such was the hilarity, so sustained the fire of ironical compliments, enquiries, and pleasantries, and the general uproar.

When he did, with hand uplifted, after the manner of a prisoner arraigned for murder, he pleaded ‘a dispensation.’  I suppose it was true, for he backed the allegation with several most religious oaths and imprecations, and explained how men were not always quite so strong as they looked; that he might, if he liked it, by permission of his bishop, eat meat at every meal in the day, and every day in the week; that his not doing so was a voluntary abstinence—­not conscientious, only expedient—­to prevent the ‘unreasonable remarks’ of his parishioners (a roar of laughter); that he was, perhaps, rightly served for not having publicly availed himself of his bishop’s dispensation (renewed peals of merriment).  By this foolish delicacy (more of that detestable horse-laughter), he had got himself into a false position; and so on, till the ad misericordiam