"Oh thin, the Lord forbid," Pat answered as he, turned the contents of his battered felt hat towards Guy; this characteristic piece of head-wear was just completing that interesting transformation that is the inevitable fate of all long-lived black felts, viz. to develop themselves into a promising green, which is quite in its place on the head of an Irish hackman. Guy thought it worth his while to interest himself in the fellow, and asked rather curiously-- "You are a Catholic Pat, are you not?" "Faith I niver was anything else since I was anything at all," was the contented reply. "I got my honest name in a Catholic chapel in th' ould sod, an' I'll take it as honest as I got it, to a Catholic churchyard when I die." "That's right," said Guy, half seriously, though slightly amused at the strange way the fellow spoke his determination. "Have you ever been to this place, we are going to, Pat?" "Troth there isn't an inch nor a fut o' ground in all Quaybec that this ould nag and meself didn't explore some time or other." "Who runs the institution?" Guy queried next. "The divil a run it iver got as long as I know it," said Pat, as he gathered up his shabby whip, to the accompaniment of some snack of his oily tongue, which succeeded miserably in inducing his languid old mare to stretch her angular supports over more space at a time, "tis allays bin standin in the wan spot since me father was a lad, and that's longer ago nor I can remember, seein' that they put off rearing me up 'till the rest was all grown up an' out o' the way." Guy could not refrain from smiling at the droll way in which his companion handled a subject, he had learned before, and therefore to-day's experience was nothing new to him, that direct questions will never get direct answers from an illiterate Irishman, and so he resigned himself beforehand to the ordeal he was passing through at present. By and by however, Pat drew forth from a depository of doubtful cleanliness and respectability, a short, black pipe, that fitted becomingly between his plentiful lips. Then after a moment's hesitation, he said doubtfully, over the sea-green shoulder of his ancient broad-cloth. "I suppose, sir, you're something of a smoker?" Taking this as one way of asking a permission to indulge, Guy answered readily. "Indeed I am, Mr. Crowley, that precious weed and myself are not strangers, at all."