“Yes,” said Eman Dhu, “do you go down, Owen, as you have the Scapular* on you, and the jug of holy water in your hand, and let Billy M'Shane, here repate the confeethurs (* _The Confiteor_) along wid you.” * The scapular is one of the highest religious orders, and is worn by both priest and layman. It is considered by the people a safeguard against evil both spiritual and physical. “Isn't it the same thing, Eman,” replied Owen, “if I shake the holy water on you, and whoever goes wid you? sure you know that if only one dhrop of it touched you, the devil himself couldn't harm you!” “And what needs yourself be afraid, then,” retorted Eman; “and you has the Scapular on you to the back of that? Didn't you say, you war coming out, that if it was the devil, you'd disparse him?” “You had betther not be mintioning his name, you _omadhaun_,” replied the other; “if I was your age, and hadn't a wife and childre on my hands, it's myself that would trust in God, and go down manfully; but the people are hen-hearted now, besides what they used to be in my time.” During this conversation, I had resolved, if possible, to keep up the delusion, until I could get myself extricated with due secrecy out of this ridiculous situation; and I was glad to find that, owing to their cowardice, there was some likelihood of effecting my design. “Ned,” said one of them to a little man, “go down and speak to it, as it can't harm you.” “Why sure,” said Ned, with a tremor in his voice, “I can speak to it where I am, widout going within rache of it. Boys, stand close to me: hem--In the name of--but don't you think I had betther spake to it in the Latin I sarve mass* wid; it can't but answer that, for the sowl of it, seeing it's a blest language?” * The person who serves mass, as it is called, is he who makes the responses to the priest during that ceremony. As the mass is said in Latin the serving of it must necessarily fall upon many who are ignorant of that language, and whose pronunciation of it is, of course, extremely ludicrous. “Very well,” the rest replied; “try that Ned; give it the best and ginteelest grammar you have, and maybe it may thrate us dacent.” Now it so happened that, in my schoolboy days, I had joined a class of young fellows who were learning what is called the “_Sarvin' of Mass_” and had impressed it so accurately on a pretty retentive memory, that I never forgot it. At length, Ned pulled, out his beads, and bedewed himself most copiously with the holy water. He then shouted out, with a voice which resembled that of a man in an ague fit, “Dom-i-n-us vo-bis-cum?” “Et cum spiritu tuo,” I replied, in a husky sepulchral tone, from behind the coffin. As soon as I uttered these words, the whole crowd ran back instinctively with fright; and Ned got so weak, that they were obliged to support him.