our
years a Government chaplain, and not yet attained to a knowledge of a
Government's method of "asking" about such matters! Kirkland's mangled
flesh would have fed the worms before the ink on the last "minute" from
deliberating Authority was dry.

Burgess, however, touched with selfish regrets, determined to baulk the
parson at the outset. He would send down an official "return" of the
unfortunate occurrence by the same vessel that carried his enemy, and
thus get the ear of the Office. Meekin, walking on the evening of the
flogging past the wooden shed where the body lay, saw Troke bearing
buckets filled with dark-coloured water, and heard a great splashing and
sluicing going on inside the hut. "What is the matter?" he asked.

"Doctor's bin post-morticing the prisoner what was flogged this morning,
sir," said Troke, "and we're cleanin' up."

Meekin sickened, and walked on. He had heard that unhappy Kirkland
possessed unknown disease of the heart, and had unhappily died before
receiving his allotted punishment. His duty was to comfort Kirkland's
soul; he had nothing to do with Kirkland's slovenly unhandsome body,
and so he went for a walk on the pier, that the breeze might blow his
momentary sickness away from him. On the pier he saw North talking to
Father Flaherty, the Roman Catholic chaplain. Meekin had been taught to
look upon a priest as a shepherd might look upon a wolf, and passed with
a distant bow. The pair were apparently talking on the occurrence of
the morning, for he heard Father Flaherty say, with a shrug of his round
shoulders, "He woas not one of moi people, Mr. North, and the Govermint
would not suffer me to interfere with matters relating to Prhotestint
prisoners." "The wretched creature was a Protestant," thought Meekin.
"At least then his immortal soul was not endangered by belief in the
damnable heresies of the Church of Rome." So he passed on, giving
good-humoured Denis Flaherty, the son of the butter-merchant of Kildrum,
a wide berth and sea-room, lest he should pounce down upon him unawares,
and with Jesuitical argument and silken softness of speech, convert
him by force to his own state of error--as was the well-known custom of
those intellectual gladiators, the Priests of the Catholic Faith. North,
on his side, left Flaherty with regret. He had spent many a pleasant
hour with him, and knew him for a narrow-minded, conscientious, yet
laughter-loving creature, whose God was neither his belly n