O’Reilly saw the bond, seized it, looked at the sum, paid it into the attorney’s hands, tore the seal from the bond; then, without looking at old Jones, whom he dared not trust himself to speak to, he clapped his hat upon his head, and rushed out of the room. Arrived at the King’s Bench prison, he hurried to the apartment where Edwards was confined. The bolts flew back; for even the turnkeys seemed to catch our hero’s enthusiasm. “Edwards, my dear boy! how do you do? Here’s a bond debt, justly due to you for my education. Oh, never mind asking any unnecessary questions; only just make haste out of this undeserved abode: our old rascal is paid off--Owen ap Jones, you know.--Well, how the man stares! Why, now, will you have the assurance to pretend to forget who I am? and must I _spake_,” continued he, assuming the tone of his childhood, “and must I _spake_ to you again in my ould Irish brogue before you will ricollict your own _little Dominick_?” When his friend Edwards was out of prison, and when our hero had leisure to look into business, he returned to the attorney to see that Mr. Owen ap Jones had been legally satisfied. “Sir,” said the attorney, “I have paid the plaintiff in this suit; and he is satisfied: but I must say,” added he, with a contemptuous smile, “that you Irish gentlemen are rather in too great a hurry in doing business: business, sir, is a thing that must be done slowly to be done well.” “I am ready now to do business as slowly as you please; but when my friend was in prison, I thought the quicker I did his business the better. Now tell me what mistake I have made, and I will rectify it instantly.” “_Instantly!_ ‘Tis well, sir, with your promptitude, that you have to deal with what prejudice thinks uncommon--an honest attorney. Here are some bank notes of yours, sir, amounting to a good round sum. You made a little blunder in this business: you left me the penalty, instead of the principal, of the bond--just twice as much as you should have done.” “Just twice as much as was in the bond, but not twice as much as I should have done, nor half as much as I should have done, in my opinion,” said O’Reilly; “but whatever I did was with my eyes open: I was persuaded you were an honest man; in which you see I was not mistaken; and as a man of business, I knew you would pay Jones only his due. The remainder of the money I meant, and mean, should lie in your hands for my friend Edwards’s use. I feared he would not have taken it from my hands: I therefore left it in yours. To have taken my friend out of prison merely to let him go back again to-day, for want of money to keep himself clear with the world, would have been a blunder indeed, but not an Irish blunder: our Irish blunders are never blunders of the heart.” CHAPTER V. THE BLISS OF IGNORANCE.