"I am ashamed of you," said he, "as countrymen, as Irishmen.

Your treatment of this poor heartbroken woman, amidst her desolation and sorrow, is a disgrace to the country that gave you birth, and to the religion you profess, if, indeed, you profess any." "Come, come, my good fellow," said Sharpe, "what is it you say about my religion?
I tell you I'll allow no man to spake a syllable against my religion; so keep quiet if you're wise, and don't attack that, otherwise don't be surprised if I make you dance the devil's hornpipe in half a shake, great a hairo as you are." "And yet you felt no scruple in just now insulting religion, in the person of this reverend gentleman who never offended you." "Him! why what the hell is he but a priest ?" "And the more entitled to your respect on that account--but since you are so easily excited in defence of your own creed, why so ready to attack in such offensive and insulting language that of another ?" "Come, come, Sharpe," said another of them, "are we to be here all day--whatever we're to do let us do it at once; if the fellow's dead, why he has had a devilish good escape of it, and if not, let us clap him on a horse, that is, provided he's able to travel.

I think myself he has got the start of us, and that the wind's out of him." "Take your time," said Steele, who felt anxious to avenge his defeat upon some one, "we must know, that before ever we leave the house--and by the great Boyne, the first person that goes between me and him will get the contents of this," and as he uttered the words he coolly and deliberately cocked the gun, and was advancing as before to the dead body.
"Holdback," said Harman, in a voice which made the man start, whilst with a firm tread and resolute eye, he stood face to face before him; "hold back, and dare not violate that sacred and awful privilege, which in every country and creed under heaven is sufficient to protect the defenceless dead.

What can be your object in this?
are you men--have you the spirit, the courage, of men?
If you are human beings, is not the sight of that unhappy fellow-creature--I hope he is happy now,--stretched out in death before you, sufficient, by the very stillness of departed life, to calm the brutal frenzy of your passions! Have you common courage?
No; I tell you to your teeth that none but spiritless caitiffs and cowards would, in the presence of death and sorrow--in the miserable cabin of the destitute widow and her orphan boy--exhibit the ruffianly outrages of men who are wanton in their cruelty, merely because they know there is none to resist them; and I may add, because they think that their excesses, however barbarous, will be shielded by higher authority.

No, I tell you, if there stood man for man before you, even without arms in their hands, you would not dare to act and swagger as you do, or to play these cruel pranks of oppression and tyranny anywhere, much less in the house of death and affliction.
Fie upon you, you are a disgrace to everything that is human, a reproach to every feeling of manhood, and every principle of religion." Hardened as they were by the habits of their profligate and debasing employment, such was the ascendancy of manly truth and and moral feeling over them, that for a minute or two they quailed under the indignant glance of Harman.