Each guest sent excuses, and the widow O'Neill was astonished at what never fails to astonish everybody when it happens to themselves.

"Rather than let my son be detained in this manner for a paltry debt," cried she, "I'd sell all I have within half an hour to a pawnbroker." It was well no pawnbroker heard this declaration: she was too warm to consider economy.

She sent for a pawnbroker, who lived in the same street, and, after pledging goods to treble the amount of the debt, she obtained ready money for her son's release.
O'Neill, after being in custody for about an hour and a half, was set at liberty upon the payment of his debt.

As he passed by the cathedral in his way home, he heard the clock strike; and he called to a man, who was walking backwards and forwards in the churchyard, to ask whether it was two or three that the clock struck.

"Three," answered the man; "and, as yet, all is safe." O'Neill, whose head was full of other things, did not stop to inquire the meaning of these last words.