pretension to his power, and leading the dark into thicker
darkness? Then these hands--blood!--broken vows!--ha! ha! ha! Well,
go--let misery have its laugh, like the light that breaks from the
thunder-cloud. Prefer Voltaire to Christ; sow the wind, and reap the
whirlwind, as I have done--ha, ha, ha! Swim, world--swim about me! I
have lost the ways of Providence, and am dark! She awaits me; but I
broke the chain that galled us: yet it still rankles--still rankles!"

The unhappy man threw himself into a chair in a paroxysm of frenzied
agony. For more than an hour he sat in the same posture, until he became
gradually hardened into a stiff, lethargic insensibility, callous and
impervious to feeling, reason, or religion--an awful transition from a
visitation of conscience so terrible as that which he had just suffered.
At length he arose, and by walking moodily about, relapsed into his
usual gloomy and restless character.

When Bartley went home, he communicated to his wife Father Philip's
intention of calling on the following day, to hear a correct account of
the Lianhan Shee.

"Why, thin," said she, "I'm glad of it, for I intinded myself to go to
him, any way, to get my new scapular consecrated. How-an'-ever, as he's
to come, I'll get a set of gospels for the boys an' girls, an' he can
consecrate all when his hand's in. Aroon, Bartley, they say that man's
so holy that he can do anything--ay, melt a body off the face o' the
earth, like snow off a ditch. Dear me, but the power they have is
strange all out!"

"There's no use in gettin' him anything to ate or dhrink," replied
Bartley; "he wouldn't take a glass o' whiskey once in seven years.
Throth, myself thinks he's a little too dry; sure he might be holy
enough, an' yet take a sup of an odd time. There's Father Felix, an'
though we all know he's far from bein' so blessed a man as him, yet he
has friendship an' neighborliness in him, an' never refuses a glass in
rason."

"But do you know what I was tould about Father Philip, Bartley?"

"I'll tell you that afther I hear it, Mary, my woman; you won't expect
me to tell what I don't know?--ha, ha, ha!"

"Behave, Bartley, an' quit your jokin' now, at all evints; keep it till
we're talkin' of somethin' else, an' don't let us be committin' sin,
maybe, while we're spakin' of what we're spakin' about; but they say
it's as thrue as the sun to the dial:--the Lent afore last itself it
was,--he never tasted mate or dhrink durin