"By Heaven!" cried I, losing all patience, "this is too bad. You urge me into a long account of what I know nothing, and then to rescue _your_ own ignorance, you declare _me_ impertinent. There is not a lawyer's clerk in Ireland, there is no pettifogging practitioner for half-crown fees, there's not a brat that carries a blue bag down the Bachelor's Walk, could n't teach you all three. You go through some of the forms, but you know nothing of the facts of justice. You sit up there, like three stucco-men in mourning,--a perfect mockery of--" I was not suffered to finish, Tom, for, at a signal from the president, two gendarmes seized me on either side, and, notwithstanding some demonstrations of resistance, led me off to prison. Ay, I must write the word again--to prison! Kenny, I, Dodd, of Dod s borough, Justice of the Peace, and chairman of the Union of Bruff, committed to jail like a common felon! [Illustration: 142] I 'm sorry I suffered my feelings to get the better--perhaps I ought to say the worse--of me. Now that it's all over, it were better that I had not knocked down the turnkey, and kicked Vanhoegen out of my cell. It would have been both more discreet and more decorous, to have submitted patiently. I know it's what _you_ would have done, Tom, and trusted to your action for damages to indemnify you; but I'm hasty, that's the fact; and if I wanted to deny it, the state of the jailer's nose, and my own sprained thumb, would give evidence against me. But are there no allowances to be made for the provocation? Perhaps not for a simple assault; but if I had killed the turnkey, I'm certain the jury would discover the "circonstances atténuantes."