been drinking in a neighbouring
ale-house. With one accord they took part with their countryman, and
would have rescued him from the civil officers with all the pleasure in
life if he had not fortunately possessed just sufficient sense and
command of himself to restrain their party spirit, and to forbid them, as
they valued his life and reputation, to interfere, by word or deed, in
his defence.

He then despatched one of the haymakers home to his mother, to inform her
of what had happened, and to request that she would get somebody to be
bail for him as soon as possible, as the officers said they could not let
him out of their sight till he was bailed by substantial people, or till
the debt was discharged.

The widow O'Neill was just putting out the candles in the ball-room when
this news of her son's arrest was brought to her. We pass over Hibernian
exclamations: she consoled her pride by reflecting that it would
certainly be the most easy thing imaginable to procure bail for Mr.
O'Neill in Hereford, where he had so many friends who had just been
dancing at his house; but to dance at his house she found was one thing
and to be bail for him quite another. Each guest sent excuses, and the
widow O'Neill was astonished at what never fails to astonish everybody
when it happens to themselves. "Rather than let my son be detained in
this manner for a paltry debt," cried she, "I'd sell all I have within
half an hour to a pawnbroker." It was well no pawnbroker heard this
declaration: she was too warm to consider economy. She sent for a
pawnbroker, who lived in the same street, and, after pledging goods to
treble the amount of the debt, she obtained ready money for her son's
release.

O'Neill, after being in custody for about an hour and a half, was set at
liberty upon the payment of his debt. As he passed by the cathedral in
his way home, he heard the clock strike; and he called to a man, who was
walking backwards and forwards in the churchyard, to ask whether it was
two or three that the clock struck. "Three," answered the man; "and, as
yet, all is safe."

O'Neill, whose head was full of other things, did not stop to inquire the
meaning of these last words. He little suspected that this man was a
watchman whom the over-vigilant verger had stationed there to guard the
Hereford Cathedral from his attacks. O'Neill little guessed that he had
been arrested merely to keep him from blowing up the cathedral this
night.