“Don’t hathen me, you had betther; but answer my question, you rascally heretic.”

“Heretic inagh! oh, thin, is it from a barefaced idolather like you that we hear heretic called to us!  Faith, it’s come to a purty time o’ day wid us!”

“You’re a blessed convart not to know the Forty-nine articles of your fat establishment!”

“And I’ll hould a wager that you don’t know this minute how many saikerments in your idolathry.  Oh, what a swaggerin’ Catholic you are, you poor hair-brained blackguard!”

“I believe you found some convincin’ texts in the big purse of the Bible blackguards—­do you smell that, Darby?”

“You have a full purse, they say, but, by the time Father M’Cabe takes the price of your trangressions out of it—­as he won’t fail to do—­take my word for it, it’ll be as lank as a stocking without a leg in it—­do you smell that, Bob ahagur?”

“Where was your church before the Reformation?”

“Where was your face before it was washed?”

“Do you know the four pillars that your Church rests upon? because if you don’t, I’LL tell you—­it was Harry the aigth, Martin Luther, the Law, and the Devil.  Put that in your pipe and smoke it.  Ah, what a purty boy you are, and what a deludin’ face you’ve got.”

“So the priest’s doin’ you—­he’s the man can pluck a fat goose, Bob.”

“Don’t talk of pluckin’ geese—­you have taken some feathers out o’ the Bible blades, to all accounts.  How do you expect to be saved by joining an open heresy?”

“Whisht, you hathen, that has taken to idolathry bekase Father M’Cabe made an ass of you by a thrick that every one knows.  But I tell you to your brazen face, that you’ll be worse yet than ever you were.”

“You disgraced your family by turnin’ apostate, and we know what for.  Little Solomon, the greatest rogue unhanged, gave you the only grace you got or ever will get.”

“Why, you poor turncoat, isn’t the whole country laughin’ at you, and none more than your own friends.  The great fightin’ Orangeman and blood-hound turned voteen!—­oh, are we alive afther that!”

“The blaggard bailiff and swindler turned swadler, hopin’ to get a fatter cut from the Bible blades, oh!”

“Have you your bades about you? if you have, I’ll throuble you to give us a touch of your Padareen Partha.  Orange Bob at his Padareen Partha! ha, ha, ha.”

“You know much about Protestantism.  Blow me, but it’s a sin to see such a knavish scoundrel professing it.”

“It’s a greater sin, you Orange omad-hawn, to see the likes o’ you disgracin’ the bades an’ the blessed religion you tuck an you.”

“You were no disgrace, then, to the one you left; but you are a burnin’ scandal to the one you joined, and they ought to kick you out of it.”

In fact, both converts, in the bitterness of their hatred, were beginning to forget the new characters they had to support, and to glide back unconsciously, or we should rather say, by the force of conscience, to their original creeds.