In the presence of God we promise," was the unanimous reply.

"Then, my children, may the blessing of Almighty God be with you, and
guard and protect you wherever you go. And now proceed home, and sleep
with consciences unburthened by guilt."

And thus were Valentine M'Clutchy and his son saved, on this occasion,
by the very man whom they termed "a rebellious Popish priest."

It was observed, however, by most of those present that Owen O'Regan
availed himself of the good priest's remonstrance to disappear from the
meeting--thus evading the solemn obligation to refrain from crime, into
which all the rest entered.

CHAPTER XXVI.--Harman's Interview with Mary M'Loughlin

--An Execution for Rent Forty Years ago--Gordon Harvey's Friendly
Remonstrance with his Brother Orangemen.

The development, by Poll Doolin, of the diabolical plot against Mary
M'Loughlin's character, so successfully carried into effect by Phil
and Poll herself, took a deadly weight off Harman's heart. Mary, the
following morning, little aware that full justice had been rendered her,
was sitting in the parlor with her mother, who had been complaining for
a day or two of indisposition, and would have admitted more fully the
alarming' symptoms she felt, were it not for the declining health of her
daughter. If there be one misery in life more calculated than another to
wither and consume the heart, to make society odious, man to look like a
blot in the creation, and the very providence of God doubtful, it is
to feel one's character publicly slandered and misrepresented by
the cowardly and malignant, by the skulking scoundrel and the moral
assassin--to feel yourself loaded with imputations that are false,
calumnious, and cruel. Mary M'Loughlin felt all this bitterly.

In her heart; so bitterly, indeed, that all relish for life had departed
from her. She was now spiritless, hopeless, without an aim or object, or
anything to sustain her, or to give interest to existence. Philosophy,
which too often knows little about actual life, tells us that a
consciousness of being innocent of the social slanders that are heaped
upon an individual, is a principle that ought to support and console
him. But the truth is, that this very consciousness of innocence is
precisely the circumstance which sharpens and poisons the arrow that
pierces him, and gives rancor to the wound.

On the morning in question, Mary sat by her mother who lay reclining
on a sofa, each k