Doctor proceeded as follows:--

"It was in the hard winter of the year __99, that we were quartered in
Maynooth, as many said, for our sins--for a more stupid place, the Lord
be merciful to it, never were men condemned to. The people at the
college were much better off than us--they had whatever was to be got in
the country, and never were disturbed by mounting guard, or night
patrols. Many of the professors were good fellows, that liked grog fully
as well as Greek, and understood short whist, and five and ten quite as
intimately as they knew the Vulgate, or the confessions of St. Augustine
--they made no ostentacious display of their pious zeal, but whenever
they were not fasting, or praying, or something of that kind, they were
always pleasant and agreeable; and to do them justice, never refused,
by any chance, an invitation to dinner--no matter at what inconvenience.
Well, even this little solace in our affliction we soon lost, by an
unfortunate mistake of that Orange rogue of the world, Major Jones,
that gave a wrong pass one night--Mr. Lorrequer knows the story, (here he
alluded to an adventure detailed in an early chapter of my Confessions)
--and from that day forward we never saw the pleasant faces of the Abbe
D'Array, or the Professor of the Humanities, at the mess. Well, the only
thing I could do, was just to take an opportunity to drop in at the
College in the evening, where we had a quiet rubber of whist, and a
little social and intellectual conversation, with maybe an oyster and a
glass of punch, just to season the thing, before we separated; all done
discreetly and quietly--no shouting nor even singing, for the 'superior'
had a prejudice about profane songs. Well, one of those nights it was,
about the first week in February, I was detained by stress of weather
from 11 o'clock, when we usually bade good-night, to past twelve, and
then to one o'clock, waiting for a dry moment to get home to the
barracks--a good mile and a half off. Every time old Father Mahony went