ng discourse with them, promising them
the assistance of himself and order, and received from them a profusion
of thanks. After a time Murtagh, observing, in a jocular tone, that
consulting was dull work, proposed a game of cards, and the leaders,
though somewhat surprised, he went to a closet, and taking out a pack of
cards, laid it upon the table; it was a strange dirty pack, and exhibited
every mark of having seen some very long service. On one of his guests
making some remarks on the 'ancientness' of its appearance, Murtagh
observed that there was a very wonderful history attached to that pack;
it had been presented to him, he said, by a young gentleman, a disciple
of his, to whom, in Dungarvon times of yore, he had taught the Irish
language, and of whom he related some very extraordinary things; he added
that he, Murtagh, had taken it to ---, where it had once the happiness of
being in the hands of the Holy Father; by a great misfortune, he did not
say what, he had lost possession of it, and had returned without it, but
had some time since recovered it; a nephew of his, who was being educated
at --- for a priest, having found it in a nook of the college, and sent
it to him.

Murtagh and the leaders then played various games with this pack, more
especially one called by the initiated 'blind hookey,' the result being
that at the end of about two hours the leaders found they had lost
one-half of their funds; they now looked serious, and talked of leaving
the house, but Murtagh begging them to stay supper, they consented.
After supper, at which the guests drank rather freely, Murtagh said that,
as he had not the least wish to win their money, he intended to give them
their revenge; he would not play at cards with them, he added, but at a
funny game of thimbles, at which they would be sure of winning back their
own; then, going out, he brought in a table, tall and narrow, on which
placing certain thimbles and a pea, he proposed that they should stake
whatever they pleased on the almost certainty of finding the pea under
the thimbles. The leaders, after some hesitation, consented, and were at
first eminently successful winning back the greater part of what they had
lost; after some time, however, Fortune, or, rather, Murtagh, turned
against them, and then, instead of leaving off, they doubled and trebled
their stakes, and continued doing so until they had lost nearly the whole
of their funds. Quite furious, they now s