“About midnight, ‘Now Jerry, (says I) you must mount a reev-o; only take care the rope does not get round your neck.’ Well, just as we were going to begin, we heard the most terriblest noise; and what should it be but one of the padres, who had been sipping the supernaculum and fallen asleep in the sentry-box--arrah, the confessional-box, I mane. Bad manners to him for stretching his daylights and prying into honest men’s affairs. Oh! your honour, he roared like a pope’s bull, and out he came as big as three moderate sized aldermen. ‘Arrah, be aisey,’ says Jerry, giving him a thump in his rotunda, which would have held a cathedral, ‘can’t you behave yourself, jewel?’ Thump went Jerry again, till his coporation sounded like a big drum, or a Chinese gong. The sentry peeped in at the church-door; Jerry twigged him and cotched the friar round the neck, and down they rolled together, both roaring with all their might.--‘Arrah, Jerry, (says I) don’t you mane to get up?’ ‘Oh, the murthering rascal, (says he) don’t you see how he’s using me;’ and indeed, your honour, the padre was belaboring him entirely with both his fists. I ran to assist, but a sarjent entered with the guard. “‘What’s the matter here?’ says the sarjent,--for he was a countryman, your honour, that had deserted from Whitelocke’s army.--‘Oh, by my conscience, (says Jerry) but that same fellow is a thumping rogue, so he is.’--‘Be aisey,’ says the sarjent; and so he speaks to the padre in broken Spanish, and tells him to get up; but he couldn’t do that thing till the sodgers lever’d him up with their firelocks. And then he tells them a long story about his being asleep, and dreaming that somebody was trying to steal the Virgin Mary, and that San Nicholas tweaked his noise, and that he woke and cotched us at it. ‘Do you hear that?’ says the sarjent. ‘Faith and I do,’ says Jerry; ‘but sorrow the silly-bull do I understand at all, at all. All I know of the matter is, that we were passing by and heard the poor jontleman hollaing; so we ran in, and thinking he’d got the cramp in the stomach, I rubbed his _eminence_ a little; when the ungrateful fellow knocked me down, and threw himself on the top of the outside of me, and I’m almost mumm’d to a jammy--arrah, no, jumm’d to a mammy--och, botheration, it’s jamm’d to a mummy I mane.’--‘But what’s that rope?’ said the sarjent, pointing to it. ‘Oh, the sinner,’ says Jerry, ‘and sure he was going to hang himself, but didn’t like it; faith, but it’s all plain enough now, Mr. Sarjent, and by the powers we’ve saved his life.’