“To whom?” said Phoebe.

“To a poor man who has lodged for these few days past next door to us,” replied the child; “I don’t know his name rightly, but he is an Irishman, and he goes out a-haymaking in the daytime along with a number of others.  He knew Mr. O’Neill in his own country, and he told mammy a great deal about his goodness.”

As the child finished these words, Phoebe took out of a drawer some clothes, which she had made for the poor woman’s children, and gave them to the little girl.  It happened that the Limerick gloves had been thrown into this drawer; and Phoebe’s favourable sentiments of the giver of those gloves were revived by what she had just heard, and by the confession Mrs. Hill had made, that she had no reasons, and but vague suspicious, for thinking ill of him.  She laid the gloves perfectly smooth, and strewed over them, whilst the little girl went on talking of Mr. O’Neill, the leaves of a rose which she had worn on Sunday.

Mr. Hill was all this time in deep conference with those prudent men of Hereford who were of his own opinion, about the perilous hole under the cathedral.  The ominous circumstance of this ball was also considered, the great expense at which the Irish glover lived, and his giving away gloves, which was a sure sign he was not under any necessity to sell them, and consequently a proof that, though he pretended to be a glover, he was something wrong in disguise.  Upon putting all these things together, it was resolved by these over-wise politicians that the best thing that could be done for Hereford, and the only possible means of preventing the immediate destruction of its cathedral, would be to take Mr. O’Neill into custody.  Upon recollection, however, it was perceived that there was no legal ground on which he could be attacked.  At length, after consulting an attorney, they devised what they thought an admirable mode of proceeding.

Our Irish hero had not that punctuality which English tradesmen usually observe in the payment of bills; he had, the preceding year, run up a long bill with a grocer in Hereford, and, as he had not at Christmas cash in hand to pay it, he had given a note, payable six months after date.  The grocer, at Mr. Hill’s request, made over the note to him, and it was determined that the money should be demanded, as it was now due, and that, if it was not paid directly, O’Neill should be that night arrested.  How Mr. Hill made the discovery of this debt to the grocer agree with his former notion that the Irish glover had always money at command we cannot well conceive, but anger and prejudice will swallow down the grossest contradictions without difficulty.

When Mr. Hill’s clerk went to demand payment of the note, O’Neill’s head was full of the ball which he was to give that evening.  He was much surprised at the unexpected appearance of the note:  he had not ready money by him to pay it; and after swearing a good deal at the clerk, and complaining of this ungenerous and ungentleman-like behaviour in the grocer and the tanner, he told the clerk to be gone, and not to be bothering him at such an unseasonable time:  that he could not have the money then, and did not deserve to have it at all.