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
unauthorised, but airnest, though, he feared, unavailing peacemaker.'
There he used to spout little maxims of reconciliation, and Christian
brotherhood and forbearance; exhorting to forget and forgive; wringing
his hands at each successive discharge; and it must be said, too, in
fairness, playing the part of a good Samaritan towards the wounded, to
whom his green hall-door was ever open, and for whom the oil of his
consolation and the wine of his best bin never refused to flow.

'Pat, my child,' said his reverence, 'that Nutter's a divil of a
fellow--at least he _was_, by all accounts; he'll be bad enough, I'm
afeared, and hard enough to manage, if everything goes smooth; but if
he's kept waiting there, fuming and boiling o