Improbable as some parts of this story were, it met with a ready credence from nearly the whole of the multitude; no tale, having any relation to the Recluse, being so marvellous that they would not readily believe it. But in no one of the assembled listeners did it excite greater surprise than in Bacon himself. It is true, that he readily recognised in the whole invention the joint influence of whiskey, and O'Reily's ingenuity, but even to these he had not supposed that he should be indebted for such downright falsehoods in his behalf. Mrs. Jamieson, too, seemed firmly to believe all that she had testified. Under these circumstances he did not feel himself called upon to set the matter right at the expense of Virginia's feelings, and the inevitable defeat of the measures in which he was that very morning deeply engaged. How the Irishman was to manage his part of the narrative when called upon, as he certainly would be, and that so speedily that no time would be allowed to exchange a word with his master, Bacon could not divine. He knew right well that O'Reily was gifted with a strong tendency to the most outrageous and even ridiculous exaggeration, and that he would carry through whatever he should undertake to say, with wonderful shrewdness and imperturbable confidence; but how he was to make his story agree with that which he had put into the mouth of Mrs. Jamieson, and at the same time explain the wound upon his own face, and the contusion upon his head, without being guilty of some direct and palpable falsehood, was more than his master could imagine. At length Brian O'Reily was called to state what he knew touching the death of the fisherman. The first question propounded by the officer was, "Well, O'Reily, tell the jury how, and when you came to the house of the deceased." "Oh! thin, and I'm bothered to know whether I got there by land or wather, and faix, I'm after b'leiven it was naither uv them." "How then did you get there, if you went neither by land nor water?" "An by the vestments, may be I wouldn't be far wrang, if I said it was the crathur that took me there, seein I can't deny it iny way, your haner." "You saw no one strike or maltreat the deceased.". "It would be but ill manners in me to be conthradictin your haner." "You are sure you did not strike him yourself." "As sure as two tin-pinnies--Divil burn the man that Brian O'Reily ever ill used when he was down--much less when he was dead, your haner." (crossing himself.) "How then came that cut upon the corner of your mouth?" "Oh! murther, and is it these your haner's axing after?" and he ingeniously placed his finger upon a smaller wound made by his bottle on the previous night. "Yes, O'Reily, we wish you to state how you came by those wounds." "Oh! but I'm bowld to show your haner, seein its you that axed me--sure here's the wapon that kilt me all out!" and as he spoke, he pulled out his broken necked bottle and handed it to his catechist.