“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 of the finest scholars in the three kingdoms. But how do you remember that?”