At Dublin, at the request of “the good old dean,” he assisted in administering the Lord’s supper in St. Patrick’s. At Maryborough, he complied with the wish of the clergyman, and preached in the parish church. The Methodist chapel at Waterford he describes as “a foul, horrid, miserable hole.” For the first time, he preached at Clones, using, as his church, an old Danish fort. Here Methodism had been introduced about the year 1768. The papists were furious, and magistrates refused to interfere; but, just when the place was about to be given up, a military pensioner, an old presbyterian, took his stand in the centre of the market, and, shouldering his musket, declared that he would shoot the first man that attempted to disturb the preacher. The rioters were frightened; and the rough old soldier mounted guard every sabbath afternoon, until opposition ceased.[237] At Londonderry, Wesley accepted the bishop’s invitation to dinner; the prelate remarking, “I know you do not love our hours, and will therefore order dinner to be on the table between two and three o’clock.” “We had,” says Wesley, “a piece of boiled beef, and an English pudding. This is true good breeding.” At Castle Caulfield, writes Wesley, with the utmost _sang froid_, “the rain came plentifully, through the thatch, into my lodging room; but I found no present inconvenience, and was not careful for the morrow.” Six days afterwards, Wesley was seized with illness, which nearly proved fatal; but for three days more, though in a burning fever, he continued travelling and preaching almost as usual. He had now reached the town of Lurgan, where, four years previously, a society had been formed, one of the first members being Isaac Bullock, an old soldier, who had been at the capture of several islands in the West Indies, and was one of sixty, called “the forlorn hope,” who, in 1762, first entered the breach at the storming of Havannah, only six of the sixty escaping with their lives. The house of this sturdy veteran was the preaching place of the Lurgan Methodists.[238] Here Wesley was obliged to succumb to fever. He sent for a physician, who told him he must rest. Wesley replied, he could not, as he “had appointed to preach at several places, and must preach as long as he could speak.” The doctor gave him medicine, and off he went to Tanderagee, and then to a gentleman’s seat, three miles beyond Lisburn, where nature sank, and the conquered evangelist was compelled to take his bed. Strength, memory, and mind entirely failed. For three days, he lay more dead than alive. His tongue was black and swollen. He was violently convulsed. For some time his pulse was not discernible. Hope was almost gone; when Joseph Bradford, his travelling companion, came with a cup, and said, “Sir, you must take this.” Wesley writes: “I thought, ‘I will, if I can swallow, to please him; for it will do me neither harm nor good.’ Immediately it set me a vomiting; my heart began to beat, and my