(A low whistle from his reverence).  ’That’s a boy that comes from a fighting county—­Galway.  I wish you saw them at an election time.  Why, there’s no end of divarsion—­the divarsion of stopping them, of course, I mean (observing a sudden alteration in Loftus’s countenance).  An’ you, av coorse, want to stop it?  And so, av coorse, do I, my dear.  Well, then, wait a bit, now—­we must have our eyes open.  Don’t be in a hurry—­let us be harrumless as sarpints, but wise as doves.  Now, ’tis a fine thing, no doubt, to put an end to a jewel by active intherfarence, though I have known cases, my dear child, where suppressing a simple jewel has been the cause of half a dozen breaking out afterwards in the same neighbourhood, and on the very same quarrel, d’ye mind—­though, of coorse, that’s no reason here or there, my dear boy!  But take it that a jewel is breaking down and coming to the ground of itself (here a hugely cunning wink), in an aisy, natural, accommodating way, the only effect of intherfarence is to bolster it up, d’ye see, so just considher how things are, my dear.  Lave it all to me, and mind my words, it can’t take place without a second.  The officers have refused, so has Toole, you won’t undertake it, and it’s too late to go into town.  I defy it to come to anything.  Jest be said be me, Dan Loftus, and let sleeping dogs lie.  Here I am, an old experienced observer, that’s up to their tricks, with my eye upon them.  Go you to bed—­lave them to me—­and they’re checkmated without so much as seeing how we bring it to pass.’

Dan hesitated.

’Arrah! go to your bed, Dan Loftus, dear.  It’s past eleven o’clock—­they’re nonplussed already; and lave me—­me that understands it—­to manage the rest.’

’Well, Sir, I do confide it altogether to you.  I know I might, through ignorance, do a mischief.’

And so they bid a mutual good-night, and Loftus scaled his garret stair and snuffed his candle, and plunged again into the business of two thousand years ago.

‘Here’s a purty business,’ says the priest, extending both his palms, with a face of warlike importance, and shutting the door behind him with what he called ‘a cow’s kick;’ ’a jewel, my dear Pat, no less; bloody work I’m afeared.’

Mr. Mahony, who had lighted a pipe during his entertainer’s absence, withdrew the fragrant tube from his lips, and opened his capacious mouth with a look of pleasant expectation, for he, like other gentlemen of his day—­and, must we confess, not a few jolly clerics of my creed, as well as of honest Father Roach’s—­regarded the ordeal of battle, and all its belongings, simply as the highest branch of sporting.  Not that the worthy father avowed any such sentiment; on the contrary, his voice and his eyes, if not his hands, were always raised against the sanguinary practice; and scarce a duel occurred within a reasonable distance unattended by his reverence, in the capacity, as he said, of ’an