That will do, my Papish old cock. Come, I say, as every man must have
a religion, and since the Papishes won't have ours, why the devil
shouldn't they have one of their own?"

"That's dangerous talk," said Steen, "to proceed from your lips,
sergeant. It smells of treason, I tell you; and if you had spoken these
words in the days of the great and good King William, you might have
felt the consequences."

"Treason and King William be hanged!" replied the sergeant, who was
naturally a good-natured, but out-spoken fellow--"sooner than I'd take
up a poor devil of a beggar that has enough to do to make out his bit
and sup. Go on about your business, poor devil; you shan't be molested.
Go to my uncle's, where you'll get a bellyfull, and a comfortable bed
of straw, and a winnow-cloth in the barn. Zounds!--it would be a nice
night's work to go out for Willy Reilly and to bring home a beggar man
in his place."

This was a narrow escape upon the part of Fergus, who knew that if
they had made' a prisoner of him, and produced him before Sir Robert
Whitecraft, who was a notorious persecutor, and with whom the Red
Rapparee was now located, he would unquestionably have been hanged
like a dog. The officer of the party, however--to wit, the worthy
sergeant--was one of those men who love a drop of the native, and
whose heart besides it expands into a sort of surly kindness that has
something comical and not disagreeable in it. In addition to this, he
never felt a confidence in his own authority with half the swagger which
he did when three quarters gone. Steen and he were never friends, nor
indeed was Steen ever a popular man among his acquaintances. In matters
of trade and business he was notoriously dishonest, and in the moral