said I, ’ye ould thaif, and to tell his Holiness
how I have been treated by ye;’ then going down
on my knees before his Holiness, I said, ’Arrah,
now, your Holiness! will ye not see justice done to
a poor boy who has been sadly misused? The pack
of cards which that old ruffian has in his hand are
my cards, which he has taken from me, in order to chate
with. Arrah! don’t play with him, your
Holiness, for he’ll only chate ye—there
are dirty marks upon the cards which bear the trumps,
put there in order to know them by; and the ould thaif
in daling out will give himself all the good cards,
and chate ye of the last farthing in your pocket;
so let them be taken from him, your Holiness, and
given back to me; and order him to lave the room,
and then, if your Holiness be for an honest game, don’t
think I am the boy to baulk ye. I’ll take
the old ruffian’s place, and play with ye till
evening, and all night besides, and divil an advantage
will I take of the dirty marks, though I know them
all, having placed them on the cards myself.’
I was going on in this way when the ould thaif of
a rector, flinging down the cards, made at me as if
to kick me out of the room, whereupon I started up
and said, ‘If ye are for kicking, sure two can
play at that;’ and then I kicked at his reverence,
and his reverence at me, and there was a regular scrimmage
between us, which frightened the Pope, who, getting
up, said some words which I did not understand, but
which the cook afterwards told me were, ’English
extravagance, and this is the second edition;’
for it seems that, a little time before, his Holiness
had been frightened in St. Peter’s Church by
the servant of an English family, which those thaives
of the English religious house had been endeavouring
to bring over to the Catholic faith, and who didn’t
approve of their being converted. Och! his Holiness
did us all sore injustice to call us English, and to
confound our house with the other; for however dirty
our house might be, our house was a clane house compared
with the English house, and we honest people compared
with those English thaives. Well, his Holiness
was frighted, and the almoner ran out, and brought
in his Holiness’s attendants, and they laid hold
of me, but I struggled hard, and said, ’I will
not go without my pack; arrah, your Holiness! make
them give me my pack, which Shorsha gave me in Dungarvon
times of old;’ but my struggles were of no use.
I was pulled away and put out in the ould dungeon,
and his Holiness went away sore frighted, crossing
himself much, and never returned again.
“In the old dungeon I was fastened to the wall by a chain, and there I was disciplined once every other day for the first three weeks, and then I was left to myself, and my chain, and hunger; and there I sat in the dungeon, sometimes screeching, sometimes hallooing, for I soon became frighted, having nothing in the cell to divert me. At last the cook found his way to me by stealth, and comforted me a little,