, sir."

"Unless you should suspect, or ascertain, that it is some person on
behalf of Miss Gourlay; and even then, mark, I am very ill indeed, and
you do not think me able to speak to any one; but will come in and see."

"Yes, sir; certainly sir."

"There, then, that will do."

The priest, on leaving the baronet's residence, was turning his steps
toward the hotel in which the stranger had put up, when his messenger to
Constitution Hill approaching put his hand to his hat, and respectfully
saluted him.

"I beg your pardon, sir," said he, "and I am sorry, now that I know who
you are, for the trouble you got into."

"Thank you, my friend," said the priest; "I felt it wouldn't signify,
knowing in my conscience that I was no robber. In the meantime, I got
one glimpse of your metropolitan life, as they call it, and the Lord
knows I never wish to get another. Troth, I was once or twice so
confounded with the noise and racket, that I thought I had got into
purgatory by mistake."

"Tut, sir, that's nothing," replied Skipton; "we were very calm and
peaceable this morning; but with respect to that baronet, he's a
niggardly fellow. Only think of him, never once offering us the
slightest compensation for bringing him home his property! There's not
another man in Ireland would send us off empty-handed as he did. The
thing's always usual on recovering property."

"Speak for yourself, in the singular number, if you plaise; you don't
imagine that I wanted compensation."

"No, sir, certainly not; but I'm just thinking," he added, after
curiously examining Father M'Mahon's face for some time, "that you and I
met before somewhere."

"Is that the memory you have?" said the priest, "when you ought to
recollect that we met this morning, much against my will, I must say."

"I don't mean that," said the man; "but I think I saw you once in a
lunatic asylum."

"Me, in a lunatic asylum?" exclaimed the good priest, somewhat
indignantly. "The thing's a bounce, my good man, before you go farther.
The little sense I've had has been sufficient, thank goodness, to keep
me free from such establishments."

"I don't mean that, sir," replied the other, smiling, "but if I don't
mistake, you once brought a clergyman of our persuasion to the lunatic
asylum in ------."

"Ay, indeed," returned the priest; "poor Quin. His was a case of
monomania; he imagined himself a gridiron, on which all heretics were to
be roasted. That young man was one o