y way. The world's all chance; boys, as Sargint Eustace used to
say, and whin we die there's no more about us; so that I don't see why
a man mightn't as well switch the priest's book as any other, only that,
somehow, a body can't shake the terror of it off o' them."

"I dunna, Anthony, but you and I ought to curse that sargint; only for
him we mightn't be as we are, sore in our conscience, an' afeard of
every fut we hear passin'," observed Denis.

"Spake for your own cowardly heart, man alive," replied Anthony; "for my
part, I'm afeared o' nothin'. Put round the glass, and don't be nursin'
it there all night. Sure we're not so bad as the rot among the sheep,
nor the black leg among the bullocks, nor the staggers among the horses,
any how; an' yet they'd hang us up only for bein' fond of a bit o'
mate--ha, ha, ha!"

"Thrue enough," said the Big Mower, philosophizing--"God made the
beef and the mutton, and the grass to feed it; but it was man made
the ditches: now we're only bringin' things back to the right way that
Providence made them in, when ould times were in it, manin' before
ditches war invinted--ha, ha, ha!"

"'Tis a good argument," observed Kenny, "only that judge and jury
would be a little delicate in actin' up to it; an' the more's the pity.
Howsomever, as Providence made the mutton, sure it's not harm for us to
take what he sends."

"Ay; but," said Denis,

"'God made man, an' man made money;
God made bees, and bees made honey;
God made Satan, an' Satan made sin;
An' God made a hell to put Satan in.'

Let nobody say there's not a hell; isn't there it plain from Scripthur?"

"I wish you had the Scripthur tied about your neck!" replied Anthony.
"How fond of it one o' the greatest thieves that ever missed the rope
is! Why the fellow could plan a roguery with any man that ever danced
the hangman's hornpipe, and yet he be's repatin' bits an' scraps of ould
prayers, an' charms, an' stuff. Ay, indeed! Sure he has a varse out o'
the Bible, that he thinks can prevent a man from bein' hung up any day!"

While Denny, the Big Mower, and the two Meehans were thus engaged
in giving expression to their peculiar opinions, the Pedlar held a
conversation of a different kind with Anne.

With the secrets of the family in his keeping, he commenced a rather
penitent review of his own life, and expressed his intention of
abandoning so dangerous a mode of accumulating wealth. He said that
he thanked h