This was spoken in a most wheedling and insinuating tone replete with the the confidence of one who knew that the stronger he spoke the more satisfaction he would give his auditor, and the more readily he would avert any suspicion as to his object and appearance at such an hour.
“Yes,” returned the priest, giving his burthen an uneasy twitch, “we have had too weighty a load upon our shoulders this many a day, and the devil's own predicament it is to be overburthened with anything—we all know that.”
“Sorra doubt of it,” replied the other, easing himself as well as he could by a corresponding hitch; “but it's one comfort to myself anyhow, that I done my duty against the same tithes—an' bad luck to them!”
“If you did your duty, you weren't without a good example, at all events,” replied the priest; “I taught you how to hate the accursed impost—but at the same time, you know I always told you to make a distinction between the tithes and the—hem—”
“An' what, your reverence?”
“Hem—why you know, Con, that we're commanded to love our enemies, and it was upon this ground that I always taught you to make a distinction, as I say, between the tithes and the parsons themselves. And by the way, now, I don't know but it would be our duty,” he proceeded, “to render the same parsons, now that they're suffering, as much good for evil as possible. It would be punishing the thieves by heaping, as the Scripture says, coals of fire upon their heads.”
“And do you think, your reverence,” replied the other, who was too quick of apprehension not to suspect what the priest was driving at, “do you think that I have been so long listening to your advice, not to know that such a coorse was my duty?”
“That's the way,” continued the priest, “to punish them like a Christian.”
“Ay, to punish them, your reverence, as you say—an' in troth, I'm the man myself that 'ud go any length to do it.”
“But where are you bound to now, Con, and what—ahem—what is that you are carrying?” asked the priest.