to place her hand against that part of her person which long usage has consecrated as the seat of castigation.  The abnormalities of harelip, breastmole, supernumerary digits, negro’s inkle, strawberry mark and portwine stain were alleged by one as a prima FACIE and natural hypothetical explanation of those swineheaded (the case of Madame Grissel Steevens was not forgotten) or doghaired infants occasionally born.  The hypothesis of a plasmic memory, advanced by the Caledonian envoy and worthy of the metaphysical traditions of the land he stood for, envisaged in such cases an arrest of embryonic development at some stage antecedent to the human.  An outlandish delegate sustained against both these views, with such heat as almost carried conviction, the theory of copulation between women and the males of brutes, his authority being his own avouchment in support of fables such as that of the Minotaur which the genius of the elegant Latin poet has handed down to us in the pages of his Metamorphoses.  The impression made by his words was immediate but shortlived.  It was effaced as easily as it had been evoked by an allocution from Mr Candidate Mulligan in that vein of pleasantry which none better than he knew how to affect, postulating as the supremest object of desire a nice clean old man.  Contemporaneously, a heated argument having arisen between Mr Delegate Madden and Mr Candidate Lynch regarding the juridical and theological dilemma created in the event of one Siamese twin predeceasing the other, the difficulty by mutual consent was referred to Mr Canvasser Bloom for instant submittal to Mr Coadjutor Deacon Dedalus.  Hitherto silent, whether the better to show by preternatural gravity that curious dignity of the garb with which he was invested or in obedience to an inward voice, he delivered briefly and, as some thought, perfunctorily the ecclesiastical ordinance forbidding man to put asunder what God has joined.

But Malachias’ tale began to freeze them with horror.  He conjured up the scene before them.  The secret panel beside the chimney slid back and in the recess appeared ...  Haines!  Which of us did not feel his flesh creep!  He had a portfolio full of Celtic literature in one hand, in the other a phial marked poison.  Surprise, horror, loathing were depicted on all faces while he eyed them with a ghostly grin.  I anticipated some such reception, he began with an eldritch laugh, for which, it seems, history is to blame.  Yes, it is true.  I am the murderer of Samuel Childs.  And how I am punished!  The inferno has no terrors for me.  This is the appearance is on me.  Tare and ages, what way would I be resting at all, he muttered thickly, and I tramping Dublin this while back with my share of songs and himself after me the like of a soulth or a bullawurrus?  My hell, and Ireland’s, is in this life.  It is what I tried to obliterate my crime.  Distractions, rookshooting, the Erse language (he recited some), laudanum (he raised the