“_That_ spectre--plump, grinning, mutton-headed Jimmy Delany! who used to wish for a gold chain but long enough to encircle the _disc_ of his face twice, and it would be as long as the chain of my lord mayor of Dublin? Impossible! No, no! Reverend father, you may make me believe much; you are a man of mystery and mirth, potent and pleasant; but you will hardly bring me to believe that _that_ shadow represents my plump and good-humoured old acquaintance Jimmy Delany.” “I have my doubts too,” said his reverence. All this time the ghost-like subject of our observations stood mute and motionless, gazing at me with lack-lustre eyes, in which there was no beam of recognition. Indeed, he seemed dubious of his own identity; for when I refused to acknowledge him, he passed his hand deliberately and cautiously over his face and person, much in the way a blind man would do; and it was a considerable time before he ventured to assert “that he _was_ Jimmy Delany still--if not in flesh and blood, at laist in skin and bone.” “Alas! and has it come to this with thee, Jimmy? I recognise thy voice, though somewhat tremulous and less stentorian than of old, and I would fain inquire for what unheard of crime has this severe penance been imposed upon thee?--the direst that the dire church can inflict, it must have been! Hast thou made a pilgrimage with _unboiled_ peas in your shoes, my poor, poor Jimmy?” “Speak, sirrah!” cried the priest. “Must I tell the _thruth_, sur?” asked the spectre, reddening, and scratching his head in a dilemma. At this juncture I perceived that the person appealed to could hardly command gravity to answer the important query addressed to him, and, but that a fit of coughing came to his aid, alas for the decorum of Father Connellan! “You are a good boy, Jimmy,” said his reverence with becoming sedateness, when the teasing cough had subsided; “a very good boy to apply to me ere you answered a question under circumstances which induce you to conceal the truth if you could. But, my poor, poor fellow, as I have said and thundered forth a hundred times from the pulpit, TRUTH _should_ be spoken at all times, however painful to us; and it is especially necessary on this occasion, as I perceive a something like a fling at the discipline of our church; because, forsooth, you have dwindled from a mould four to a farthing candle! Tell the truth and shame the _devil_.”