if every man were the villain that infidelity would make him, then indeed might every man curse God for the 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’ whisky once in seven years.  Throth, myself thinks he’s a little too dhry; 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’ neighbourliness in him, an’ never refuses a glass in rason.”

“But do you know what I was tould about Father Philip, Bartley?”

“I’ll tell you that afther I hear it, Mary, my woman; you won’t expect me to tell what I don’t know?—­ha, ha, ha!”

“Behave, Bartley, an’ quit your jokin’ now, at all evints; keep it till we’re talkin’ of somethin’ else, an’ don’t let us be committin’ sin, maybe, while we’re spakin’ of what we’re spakin’ about; but they say it’s as thrue as the sun to the dial:—­the Lent afore last itself it was,—­he never tasted mate or dhrink durin’ the whole seven weeks!  Oh, you needn’t stare! it’s well known by thim that has as much sinse as you—­no, not so much as you’d carry on the point o’ this knittin’-needle.  Well, sure the housekeeper an’ the two sarvants wondhered—­faix, they couldn’t do less—­an’ took it into their heads to watch him closely; an’ what do you think—­blessed be all the saints above!—­what do you think they seen?”