the course of a month or so. Divil a word has she ever said
since your father's departure, but then she screamed and yelled enough
to last for seven years at the least. She screamed away all her senses
anyhow, for she has done nothing since but cough, cough, and fumble at
her pater-nosters--a very blessed way to pass the remainder of her
days, seeing that I expect her to drop every minute like an over-ripe
sleepy pear. So don't think any more about her, my son, for without
you are back in a jiffy, her body will be laid in consecrated ground,
and her happy, blessed soul in purgatory. _Pax vobiscum._ Amen! amen!

"And now having disposed of your father and your mother so much to
your satisfaction, I'll just tell you that Ella's mother died in the
convent at Dieppe, but whether she kept her secret or not I do not
know; but this I do know, that if she didn't relieve her soul by
confession, she's damned to all eternity. Thanks be to God for all his
mercies. Amen! Ella Flanagan is still alive, and, for a nun, is as
well as can be expected. I find that she knows nothing at all about
the matter of the exchanging the genders of the babbies--only that her
mother was on oath to Father M'Dermot, who ought to be hanged, drawn,
and quartered instead of those poor fellows whom the government called
rebels, but who were no more rebels than Father M'Grath himself,
who'll uphold the Pretender, as they call our true Catholic king, as
long as there's life in his body or a drop of whiskey left in ould
Ireland to drink his health wid.--

"Talking about Father M'Dermot puts me in mind that the bishop has not
yet decided our little bit of a dispute, saying that he must take time
to think about it. Now, considering that it's just three years since
the row took place, the old gentleman must be a very slow thinker not
to have found out by this time that I was in the right, and that
Father M'Dermot, the baste, is not good enough to be hanged.

"Your two married sisters are steady and diligent young women, having
each made three children since you last saw them. Fine boys, every
mother's son of them, with elegant spacious features, and famous
mouths for taking in whole potatoes. By the powers, but the offsets of
the tree of the O'Briens begin to make a noise in the land, anyhow, as
you would say if you only heard them roaring for their bit of suppers.

"And now, my dear son Ter