Joe accepted the boon without acknowledgment; indeed, he scrutinized the gift with an air of half-depreciation.

"You don't seem to think much of a cigar," said O'Shea, testily.

"When I can get no betther," said Joe, biting off the end.

O'Shea frowned and turned away. It was evident that he had some difficulty in controlling himself, but he succeeded, and was silent. The effort, however, could not be sustained very long, and at last he said, but in a slow and measured tone,--

"Shall I tell you a home-truth, Master Joe?"

"Yes, if you like."

"It is this, then: it is that same ungracious and ungrateful way with which you, and every one like you in Ireland, receive benefits, disgusts every stranger."

"Benefits!"

"Yes, benefits,--I said benefits."

"Sure, what's our own isn't benefits," rejoined Joe, calmly.

"Your own? May I ask if the contents of that bag were your own?"

"'T is at the devil I 'm wishin' it now," said Joe, putting his hand on his stomach. "Tis tearing me to pieces, it is, bad luck to it!"

O'Shea was angry, but such was the rueful expression of Joe's face that he laughed out again.

"Now he's goin' lame if you like!" cried Joe, with a tone of triumph that said, "All the mishaps are not on _my_ side."

O'Shea pulled up, and knowing, probably, the utter inutility of employing Joe at such a moment, got down himself to see what was amiss.

"No, it's the off leg," cried Joe, as his master was carefully examining the near one.

"I suppose he must have touched the frog on a sharp stone," said O'Shea, after a long and fruitless exploration.

"I don't think so," said Joe; "'t is more like to be a dizaze of the bone,--one of thim dizazes of the fetlock that's never cured."

A deeply uttered malediction was O'Shea's answer to the pleasant prediction.

"I never see one of them recover," resumed Joe, who saw his advantage; "but the baste will do many a day's slow work--in a cart."

"Hold your prate, and be hanged to you!" muttered O'Shea, as between anger and stooping, he was threatened with a small apoplexy. "Move them on gently for a few yards, till I get a look at him."

Joe leisurely moved into his master's place, and bestowed the rug very comfortably around his legs. This done, with a degree of detail and delay that seemed almost intended to irritate, he next slowly arranged the reins in his fingers, and then, with a jerk of his whip-hand, sending out the lash in a variety of curves, he brought the whipcord down on the leader with a "nip" that made him plunge, while the wheeler, understanding the hint, started off at full swing. So sudden and unexpected was the start, that O'Shea had barely time to spring out of the way to escape the wheel. Before, indeed, he had thoroughly recovered his footing, Joe had swept past a short turning of the road, leaving nothing but a light train of dust to mark his course.

"Stop! pull up! stop! confound you!" cried O'Shea, with other little expletives that print is not called on to repeat, and then, boiling with passion, he set off in pursuit. When he had gained the angle of the road, it was only to catch one look at his equipage as it disappeared in the distance; the road, dipping suddenly, showed him little more than a torso of the "faithful Joe," diminishing rapidly to a head, and then vanishing entirely.

"What a scoundrel! what a rascal!" cried O'Shea, as he wiped his forehead; and then, with his fist clenched and upraised, "registered a vow," as Mr. O'Connell used to say, of unlimited vengeance. If this true history does not record the full measure of the heart-devouring anger of O'Shea, it is not from any sense of its being undeserved or unreasonable, for, after all, worthy reader, it might have pushed even _your_ patience to have been left standing, of a sharp November morning, on a lonely road, while your carriage was driven off by an insolent "flunkey."

As he was about midway between the Bagni and the town of Lucca, to which he was bound, he half hesitated whether to go on or to return. There was shame in either course,--shame in going back to recount his misadventure; shame in having to call Joe to a reckoning in Lucca before a crowd of strangers, and that vile population of the stable-yard, with which, doubtless, Joe would have achieved popularity before his master could arrive.

Of a verity the situation was embarrassing, and in his muttered comments upon it might be read how thoroughly his mind took in every phase of its difficulty. "How they 'll laugh at me up at the Villa! It will last Sir William for the winter; he 'll soon hear how I won the trap from his son, and he 'll be ready with the old saw, 'Ah! ill got, ill gone!'

How young Heathcote will enjoy it; and the widow,--if she be a widow,--won't she caricature me, as I stand halloaing out after the runaway rascal? Very hard to get out of all this ridicule without something serious to cover it. That's the only way to get out of a laughable adventure; so, Master Layton, it's all the worse for _you_ this morning." In this train of thought was he deeply immersed as a peasant drove past in his light "calesina." O'Shea quickly hailed the man, and bargained with him for a seat to Lucca.

Six weary miles of a jolting vehicle did not contribute much to restore his calm of mind, and it was in a perfect frenzy of anger he walked into the inn-yard, where he saw his carriage now standing. In the stables his horses stood, sheeted up, but still dirty and travel-stained. Joe was absent. "He had been there five minutes ago; he was not an instant gone; he had never left his horses till now; taken such care of them,--watered, fed, groomed, and clothed them; he was a treasure,--there was not his like to be found." These, and suchlike, were the eulogies universally bestowed by the stable constituency upon one whom O'Shea was at the same time consigning in every form to the infernal gods! The grooms and helpers wore a half grin on their faces as he passed out, and again he muttered, "All the worse for _you_, Layton; you'll have to pay the reckoning."

He was not long in finding the Barsotti Palace, where Layton lodged; an old tumble-down place it was, with a grass-grown, mildewed court, and some fractured statues, green with damp, around it. The porter, indicating with a gesture of his thumb where the stranger lived, left O'Shea to plod up the stairs alone.

It was strange enough that it should then have occurred to him, for the first time, that he had no definite idea about what he was coming for.

Layton and he had, it is true, some words, and Layton had given him time and place to continue the theme; but in what way? To make Layton reiterate in cold blood something he might have uttered in anger, and would probably retract, if called upon courteously,--this would be very poor policy. While, on the other hand, to permit him to insinuate anything on the score of his success at play might be even worse again.

It was a case for very nice management, and so O'Shea thought, as, after arriving at a door bearing Layton's name on a visiting-card, he took a turn in the lobby to consider his course of proceeding. The more he thought over it, the more difficult he found it; in fact, at last he saw it to be one of those cases in which the eventuality alone can decide the line to take, and so he gave a vigorous pull at the bell, determined to begin the campaign at once.

The door was not opened immediately, and he repeated his summons still louder. Scarcely had the rope quitted his hand, however, when a heavy bolt was drawn back, the door was thrown wide, and a tall athletic man, in shirt and trousers, stood before him.

"Well, stranger, you arn't much distressed with patience, that's a fact," said a strongly nasal accent, while the speaker gave a look of very fierce defiance at the visitor.

"Am I speaking to Colonel Quackinboss?" asked O'Shea, in some surprise.

"Well, sir, if it ain't him, it's some one in _his_ skin, I'm thinkin'."

"My visit was to Mr. Layton," said the other, stiffly. "Is he at home?"

"Yes, sir; but he 's not a-goin' to see you."

"I came here by his appointment."

"That don't change matters a red cent, stranger; and as I said a'ready, he ain't a-goin' to see you."

"Oh, then I 'm to understand that he has placed himself in _your_ hands?

You assume to act for him?" said O'Shea, stiffly.

"Well, if you like to take it from that platform, I 'll offer no objection," said Quackinboss, gravely.

"Am I, or am I not, to regard you as a friend on this occasion?" said O'Shea, authoritatively.

"I 'll tell you a secret, stranger; you 'll not be your own friend if you don't speak to me in another tone of voice. I ain't used to be halloaed at, I ain't."

"One thing at a time, sir," said O'Shea. "When I have finished the business which brought me here, I shall be perfectly at your service."

"Now I call that talkin' reasonable. Step inside, sir, and take a seat,"

said Quackinboss, whose manner was now as calm as possible.

Whatever irritation O'Shea really felt, he contrived to subdue it in appearance, as he followed the other into the room.

O'Shea was not so deficient in tact that he could not see his best mode of dealing with the American was to proceed with every courtesy and deference, and so, as he seated himself opposite him, he mentioned the reason of his coming there without anything like temper, and stated that from a slight altercation such a difference arose as required either an explanation or a meeting.

"He can't go a-shooting with you, stranger; he 's struck down this morning," said Quackinboss, gravely, as the other finished.

"Do you mean he 's ill?"