nly the clergy, but a certain number of their own
friends and relations.

"Well, stand aside, I'll hear you first; and now, come up here, you
young gentleman, that laughed so heartily a while ago at my joke--ha,
ha, ha!--come up here, child."

A lad now approached him, whose face, on a first view, had something
simple and thoughtless in it, but in which, on a closer inspection,
might be traced a lurking, sarcastic humor, of which his Reverence never
dreamt.

"You're for confession, of course?" said the priest.

"_Of coorse_," said the lad, echoing him, and laying a stress upon
the word, which did not much elevate the meaning of the compliance in
general with the rite in question.

"Oh!" exclaimed the priest, recognizing him when he approached--"you are
Dan Fagan's son, and designed for the church yourself; you are a good
Latinist, for I remember examining you in Erasmus about two years
ago--_Quomodo sehabet corpus tuum, charum lignum sacredotis_"

"_Valde, Domine_," replied the lad, "_Quomodo se habet anima tua, charum
exemplar sacerdotage, et fulcrum robustissium Ecclesiae sacrosancte_?"

"Very good, Harry," replied his Reverence, laughing--"stand aside; I'll
hear you after Kelly."

He then called up a man with a long melancholy face, which he noticed
before to have been proof against his joke, and after making two
or three additional and fruitless experiments upon his gravity, he
commenced a cross fire of peevish interrogatories, which would have
excluded him from the "tribunal" on that occasion, were it not that the
man was remarkably well prepared, and answered the priest's questions
very pertinently.

This over, he repaired to his room, where the work of absolution
commenced; and, as there was a considerable number to be rendered
sinless before the hour of dinner, he contrived to unsin them with an
alacrity that was really surprising.

Immediately after the conversation already detailed between his
Reverence and Phaddhy, the latter sought Katty, that he might
communicate to her the unlucky oversight which they had committed, in
neglecting to provide fresh meat and wine. "We'll be disgraced forever,"
said Phaddhy, "without either a bit of mutton or a bottle of wine for
the gintlemen, and that big thief Parrah More Slevin had both."

"And I hope," replied Katty, "that you're not so mane as to let any of
that faction outdo you in dacency, the nagerly set? It was enough for
them to bate us in the law-shoo