Jillen pacified the uproar in the kitchen by loud promises, and returned to Paddy.  The use of the leather breeches passed her comprehension; but Paddy actually took up the leather breeches, tore away the lining with great care, chopped the leather with the hatchet on the block, and put it into the pot as tripes.  Considering the situation in which Andy and his friends were, and the appetite of the Irish peasantry for meat in any shape—­“a bone” being their summum bonum—­the risk was very little.  If discovered, however, Paddy’s safety was much worse than doubtful, as no people in the world have a greater horror of any unusual food.  One of the most deadly modes of revenge they can employ is to give an enemy dog’s or cat’s flesh; and there have been instances where the persons who have eaten it, on being informed of the fact, have gone mad.  But Paddy’s habit of practical jokes, from which nothing could wean him, and his anger at their conduct, along with the fear he was in did not allow him to hesitate a moment.  Jillen remonstrated in vain.  “Hould your tongue, you foolish woman.  They’re all as blind as the pig there.  They’ll never find it out.  Bad luck to ’em too, my leather breeches! that I gave a pound note and a hog for in Cork.  See how nothing else would satisfy ’em!” The meat at length was ready.  Paddy drowned it in butter, threw out the potatoes on the table, and served it up smoking hot with the greatest gravity.

“By ——­,” says Jack Shea, “that’s fine stuff!  How a man would dig a trench after that.”

“I’ll take a priest’s oath,” answered Tim Cohill, the most irritable of men, but whose temper was something softened by the rich steam;—­

“Yet, Tim, what’s a priest’s oath?  I never heard that.”

“Why, sure, every one knows you didn’t ever hear of anything of good.”

“I say you lie, Tim, you rascal.”

Tim was on his legs in a few moments, and a general battle was about to begin; but the appetite was too strong, and the quarrel was settled; Tim having been appeased by being allowed to explain a priest’s oath.  According to him, a priest’s oath was this:—­He was surrounded by books, which were gradually piled up until they reached his lips.  He then kissed the uppermost, and swore by all to the bottom.  As soon as the admiration excited by his explanation, in those who were capable of hearing Tim, had ceased, all fell to work; and certainly, if the tripes had been of ordinary texture, drunk as was the party, they would soon have disappeared.  After gnawing at them for some time, “Well,” says Owen Connor, “that I mightn’t!—­but these are the quarest tripes I ever eat.  It must be she was very ould.”

“By ——­,” says Andy, taking a piece from his mouth to which he had been paying his addresses for the last half hour, “I’d as soon be eating leather.  She was a bull, man; I can’t find the soft end at all of it.”

“And that’s true for you, Andy,” said the man of the gun; “and ’tis the greatest shame they hadn’t a bull-bait to make him tinder.  Paddy, was it from Jack Clifford’s bull you got ’em?  They’d do for wadding, they’re so tough.”