intended, with a hearty chuckle, "you're getting fast out
of your teens, ma bouchal?" and this was of course, honored with a
merry peal; extorted as much by an effort of softening the rigor of
examination, as by the traditionary duty which entails upon the Irish
laity the necessity of laughing at a priest's jokes, without any
reference at all to their quality. Nor was his Reverence's own voice
the first to subside into that gravity which became the solemnity of the
occasion; or even whilst he continued the interrogatories, his eye was
laughing at the conceit with which it was evident the inner man was not
competent to grapple. "Well, Kelly, I can't say but you've answered
very well, as far as the repealing of them goes; but do you perfectly
understand all the commandments of the church?"

"I do, sir," replied Kelly, whose confidence kept pace with his
Reverence's good-humor.

"Well, what is meant by the fifth?"

"The fifth, sir?" said the other, rather confounded--"I must begin agin,
sir, and go on till I come to it."

"Well," said the priest, "never mind that; but tell us what the eighth
means?"

Kelly stared at him a second time, but was not able to advance
"First--Sundays and holidays, mass thou shalt hear;" but before he
had proceeded to the second, a person who stood at his elbow began to
whisper to him the proper reply, and in the act of so doing received a
lash of the whip across the ear for his pains.

"You blackguard, you!" exclaimed Father Philemy, "take that--how dare
you attempt to prompt any person that I'm examining?"

Those who stood around Kelly now fell back to a safe distance, and all
was silence, terror, and trepidation once more.

"Come, Kelly, go on--the eighth?"

Kelly was still silent.

"Why, you ninny you, didn't you repeat it just now. 'Eighth--And to his
church neglect not tithes to pay.' Now that I have put the words in your
mouth, what does it mean?"

Kelly having thus got the cue, replied, in the words of the Catechism,
"To pay _tides_ to the lawful _pasterns_ of the church, sir."

"Pasterns!--oh, you ass you! _Pasterns!_ you poor; base, contemptible,
crawling reptile, as if we trampled you under our hooves--oh, you scruff
of the earth! Stop, I say--it's pastors."

"Pastures of the church."

"And, tell me, do you fulfil that commandment?"

"I do, sir."

"It's a lie, sir," replied the priest, brandishing the whip over his
head, whilst Kelly instinctively threw up his gua