comrades stared hard at him, and thought
him in rather a queer state.

Shortly after this little surprise, I suppose by way of ratifying the
secret treaty of silence, Father Roach gave the officers and Toole a
grand Lent dinner of fish, with no less than nineteen different _plats_,
baked, boiled, stewed, in fact, a very splendid feast; and Puddock
talked of some of those dishes more than twenty years afterwards.

CHAPTER VI.

IN WHICH THE MINSTRELSY PROCEEDS.

No wonder, then, if Father Roach, when Loftus, in the innocence of his
heart, announced his song and its theme, was thoroughly uneasy, and
would have given a good deal that he had not helped that simple youth
into his difficulty. But things must now take their course. So amid a
decorous silence, Dan Loftus lifted up his voice, and sang. That voice
was a high small pipe, with a very nervous quaver in it. He leaned back
in his chair, and little more than the whites of his upturned eyes were
visible; and beating time upon the table with one hand, claw-wise, and
with two or three queer, little thrills and roulades, which re-appeared
with great precision in each verse, he delivered himself thus, in what I
suspect was an old psalm tune:--

'Now Lent is come, let us refrain
From carnal creatures, quick or slain;
Let's fast and macerate the flesh,
Impound and keep it in distress.'

Here there came a wonderful, unspellable choking sound, partly through
the mouth, partly through the nose, from several of the officers; and
old General Chattesworth, who was frowning hard upon his dessert-plate,
cried, 'Order, gentlemen,' in a stern, but very tremulous undertone.
Lord Castlemallard, leaning upon his elbow, was staring with a grave and
dreamy curiosity at the songster, and neither he nor his lordship heard
the interruption, and on went the pleasant ditty; and as the musician
regularly repeated the last two lines like a clerk in a piece of
psalmody, the young wags, to save themselves from bursting outright,
joined in the chorus, while verse after verse waxed more uproarious and
hilarious, and gave a singular relief to Loftus's thin, high, quavering
solo:--

(_Loftus, solo._)

'But to forbear from flesh, fowl, fish,
And eat potatoes in a dish,
Done o'er with amber, or a mess
Of ringos in a Spanish dress

(_Chorus of Officers._)

'Done o'er with amber, or a mess
Of ringos in a Spanish dress.'

''Tis a good song,' murmured Doctor W