Murtagh and the leaders then played various games with this pack, more especially one called by the initiated "blind hockey," the result being that at the end of about two hours the leaders found they had lost one-half of their funds; they now looked serious, and talked of leaving the house, but Murtagh begging them to stay to supper, they consented.
After supper, at which the guests drank rather freely, Murtagh said that, as he had not the least wish to win their money, he intended to give them their revenge; he would not play at cards with them, he added, but at a funny game of thimbles, at which they would be sure of winning back their own; then going out, he brought in a table, tall and narrow, on which placing certain thimbles and a pea, he proposed that they should stake whatever they pleased on the almost certainty of finding the pea under the thimbles.The leaders, after some hesitation, consented, and were at first eminently successful, winning back the greater part of what they had lost; after some time, however, Fortune, or rather Murtagh, turned against them, and then, instead of leaving off, they doubled and trebled their stakes, and continued doing so until they had lost nearly the whole of their funds.
Quite furious, they now swore that Murtagh had cheated them, and insisted on having their property restored to them.
Murtagh, without a word of reply, went to the door, and shouting into the passage something in Irish, the room was instantly filled with bogtrotters, each at least six feet high, with a stout shillelah in his hand.Murtagh then turning to his guests, asked them what they meant by insulting an anointed priest; telling them that it was not for the likes of them to avenge the wrongs of Ireland."Ihave been clane mistaken in the whole of ye," said he, "Isupposed ye Irish, but have found, to my sorrow, that ye are nothing of the kind; purty fellows to pretend to be Irish, when there is not a word of Irish on the tongue of any of ye, divil a ha'porth; the illigant young gentleman to whom Itaught Irish, in Dungarvon times of old, though not born in Ireland, has more Irish in him than any ten of ye.He is the boy to avenge the wrongs of Ireland, if ever foreigner is to do it." Then saying something to the bogtrotters, they instantly cleared the room of the young Irelanders, who retired sadly disconcerted; nevertheless, being very silly young fellows, they hoisted the standard of rebellion; few, however, joining them, partly because they had no money, and partly because the priests abused them with might and main, their rebellion ended in a lamentable manner; themselves being seized and tried, and though convicted, not deemed of sufficient importance to be sent to the scaffold, where they might have had the satisfaction of saying -"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."
My visitor, after saying that of the money won, Murtagh retained a considerable portion, that a part went to the hierarchy for what were called church purposes, and that the - took the remainder, which it employed in establishing a newspaper, in which the private characters of the worthiest and most loyal Protestants in Ireland were traduced and vilified, concluded his account by observing, that it was the common belief that Murtagh, having by his services, ecclesiastical and political, acquired the confidence of the priesthood and favour of the Government, would, on the first vacancy, be appointed to the high office of Popish Primate of Ireland.
