The man in black sat silent for a considerable time, and at length answered, in rather a faltering voice, “I was not prepared for this; you have frequently surprised me by your knowledge of things which I should never have expected any person of your appearance to be acquainted with, but that you should be aware of my name is a circumstance utterly incomprehensible to me.  I had imagined that no person in England was acquainted with it; indeed, I don’t see how any person should be, I have revealed it to no one, not being particularly proud of it.  Yes, I acknowledge that my name is Fraser, and that I am of the blood of that family or clan, of which the rector of our college once said that he was firmly of opinion that every individual member was either rogue or fool.  I was born at Madrid, of pure, oime, Fraser blood.  My parents at an early age took me to [Rome], where they shortly died, not, however, before they had placed me in the service of a cardinal, with whom I continued some years, and who, when he had no further occasion for me, sent me to the college, in the left-hand cloister of which, as you enter, rest the bones of Sir John D[ereham]; there, in studying logic and humane letters, I lost whatever of humanity I had retained when discarded by the cardinal.  Let me not, however, forget two points,—­I am a Fraser, it is true, but not a Flannagan; I may bear the vilest name of Britain, but not of Ireland; I was bred up at the English house, and there is at [Rome] a house for the education of bog-trotters; I was not bred up at that; beneath the lowest gulf, there is one yet lower; whatever my blood may be, it is at least not Irish; whatever my education may have been, I was not bred at the Irish seminary—­on those accounts I am thankful—­yes, per dio!  I am thankful.  After some years at college—­but why should I tell you my history, you know it already perfectly well, probably much better than myself.  I am now a missionary priest labouring in heretic England, like Parsons and Garnet of old, save and except that, unlike them, I run no danger, for the times are changed.  As I told you before, I shall cleave to Rome—­I must; no hay remedio, as they say at Madrid, and I will do my best to further her holy plans—­he! he!—­but I confess I begin to doubt of their being successful here—­you put me out; old Fraser, of Lovat!  I have heard my father talk of him; he had a gold-headed cane, with which he once knocked my grandfather down—­he was an astute one, but as you say, mistaken, particularly in himself.  I have read his life by Arbuthnot, {238a} it is in the library of our college.  Farewell!  I shall come no more to this dingle—­to come would be of no utility; I shall go and labour elsewhere, though . . . how you came to know my name is a fact quite inexplicable—­farewell! to you both.”

He then arose; and without further salutation departed from the dingle, in which I never saw him again. {238b}