Cups and noggins, and an indescribable variety of small vessels that were never designed for drinking, were now called into requisition, and a moderate portion of the keg was distributed among them. Reilly, while enjoying his cup, which as well as the others he did with a good deal of satisfaction, could not help being amused by the comical peculiarity of their disguises. The sinister-looking clergyman, whom we have named Hennessy, subsequently became a spy and informer, and, we may add, an enemy equally formidable and treacherous to the Catholics of the time, in consequence of having been deprived of his clerical functions by his bishop, who could not overlook his immoral and irregular conduct. He is mentioned by Matthew O'Connor, in his “History of the Irish Catholics,” and consigned to infamy as one of the greatest scourges, against both the priesthood and the people, that ever disgraced the country. But it must be admitted that he stands out in dark relief against the great body of the Catholic priests at that period, whose firmness, patience, and fidelity to their trust, places them above all praise and all suspicion. It is, however, very reasonable, that men so hunted and persecuted should be forced, not only in defence of their own lives and liberties, but also for the sake of their flocks, to assume such costumes as might most effectually disguise them, so that they would be able still, even in secret and by stealth, to administer the rites of their religion to the poor and neglected of their own creed. Some were dressed in common frieze, some in servants' cast-off liveries--however they came by them--and not a few in military uniform, that served, as it were, to mark them staunch supporters of the very Government that persecuted them. A reverend archdeacon, somewhat comely and corpulent, had, by some means or other, procured the garb of a recruiting sergeant, which fitted him so admirably that the illusion was complete; and, what bore it out still more forcibly, was the presence of a smart-looking little friar, who kept the sergeant in countenance in the uniform of a drummer. Mass was celebrated every day, hymns were sung, and prayers offered up to the Almighty, that it might please him to check the flood of persecution which had overwhelmed or scattered them. Still, in the intervals of devotion, they indulged in that reasonable cheerfulness and harmless mirth which were necessary to support their spirits, depressed as they must have been by this dreadful and melancholy confinement--a confinement where neither the light of the blessed sun, nor the fresh breezes of heaven, nor the air we breathe, in its usual purity, could reach them. Sir Thomas More and Sir Walter Raleigh, however, were cheerful on the scaffold; and even here, as we have already said, many a rustic tale and legend, peculiar to those times, went pleasantly around; many a theological debate took place, and many a thesis was discussed,