"That's true enough," cried the labourer; "for it was a darkish night, and I was low down in the glen and he high up on the side of the hill, so that I caught but a glimmer of him, as it were. But it was the master, notwithstanding, that I am quite sure of, or else the devil in his likeness. But, by the blessed saints! I do not think it could be the devil either, for he did what any man would have done in his place, and what I should have done in another minute if he hadn't come up, for I would not have stood by to see the young lady ill-treated, no how." "Doubtless not," answered the priest; "and it would be hard that the life of such a man should be sacrificed for merely defending his own child." "Oh, no! that shall never be," answered Connor, "if my word can stop it; and so, father," he continued, with a shrewd look, "I suppose that the best thing I can do is, if I am asked any questions, to say that I didn't rightly see the gentleman that did it; but that he looked like a real gentleman, and may be about the height of this Mr. Dudley. I saw him twice at the farmhouse, and if he is in the room, I can point him out as being about the tallness of the man I saw; and that's not a lie either, for they are much alike, in length at least. Neither one. nor the other stands much under six feet. I'd better not swear to him, however, for that would be bad work." "By no means," answered the priest. "Keep to mere general facts; that can but cause suspicion. I wish not to injure the young man, but merely to turn suspicion upon him rather than Mr. Clive; and by so doing, to give even Mr. Dudley himself a sort of involuntary penance, which may soften an obdurate heart towards the church which his fathers foolishly abandoned, and leave him one more chance of salvation, if he chooses to accept of it. It is a hard thing, Daniel Connor, to remain for many thousands of years in the flames of purgatory, where every moment is marked and prolonged by torture indescribable, instead of entering into eternal beatitude, where all sense of time is lost in inexpressible joy from everlasting to everlasting; but it is a still harder thing to be doomed in hell to eternal punishment, where the whole wrath and indignation of God is poured out upon the head of the unrepenting and the obstinate for ever and ever." "It is mighty hard, indeed!" answered the labourer, making the sign of the cross. "The Blessed Virgin keep us all from such luck as that!"