"'But you have accepted!' cried they out, all together.

"'I have,' said I. 'I'm to be at Fighi, wherever that is, by the 1st of August. And now,' said I, turning to the fire, and taking up the poker, 'there is nothing for me to do but resign this sacred symbol of my office into the hands of my successor.'

"Where's O'Dowd?' shouted out the crowd. And they awoke out of a pleasant sleep a little old fellow that never missed his day for two years at the club.

"'Gentlemen,' said I, in a voice trembling with feeling, 'the hour is come when my destiny is to separate me from you forever; an hour that is equally full of the past and the future, and has even no small share of present emotions. If ever there were a human institution devised to cement together the hearts and affections of men, to bind them into one indissoluble mass, and blend their instincts into identity, it is the club we have here. Here we stand, like the departed spirits at the Styx, waiting for the bark of Charon to ferry us over. To what, however? Is it to some blessed elysium of a Poor Law Commissioner's place, or is it to some unknown fate in a distant land, with five hundred a year and an allowance for monkeys? That's the question, there's the rub! as Hamlet says.' After dilating at large on this, I turned to O'Dowd. 'To your hands,' said I, 'I commit this venerable relic: keep it, guard it, honor it, and preserve it. Remember,' said I, 'that when you stir those coals it is the symbol of keeping alive in the heart the sparks of an undying hope; that though they may wet the slack and water the cinders of our nature, the fire within us will still survive, red, glowing, and generous. Is n't that as fine, as great, glorious, and free, I ask you?'

"'Who is that fellow that's talking there, with a voice like Lablache?'

asked a big man at the door; and then, as the answer was whispered in his ear, he said, 'Send him out here to me.'

"Out I went, and found myself face to face with O'Connell.

"'I want a man to stand for Drogheda to-morrow; the gentleman I expected cannot arrive there possibly before three. Will you address the electors, and speak till he comes? If he isn't there by half-past three, you shall be returned!'

"'Done!' said I. And by five o'clock on the following evening Gorman O'Shea was at the top of the poll and declared Member for Drogheda!

That was, I may say, the first lift I ever got from Fortune. May I never!" exclaimed O'Shea, half angrily,--"may I never, if he's not asleep--and snoring! These Saxons beat the world for stupidity."

The Member now suddenly bethought him that it would be a favorable moment to read his telegram, and so he tore open the envelope, and held it to the light. It was headed as usual, and addressed in full, showing that no parsimony defrauded him of his full title. The body of the despatch was, however, brief enough, and contained only one word, "Bosh!" It was clear, bold, and unmistakably "Bosh!" Could insolence go further than that? To send such a message a thousand miles, at the cost of one pound fourteen and sixpence!

"What the deuce? you've nearly upset the table!" cried Heathcote, waking suddenly up, as O'Shea with a passionate gesture had thrown one of the decanters into the other's lap.

"I was asleep, like yourself, I suppose," said the Member, roughly. "I must say, we are neither of us the very liveliest company."

"It was that yarn of yours about attacking monkeys with a poker, or some stuff of that kind, set me off," yawned Heathcote, drearily. "I had not felt the least sleepy till then."

"Here, let us fill our glasses, and drink to the jolly time that is coming for us," said O'Shea, with all his native recklessness.

"With all my heart; but I wish I could guess from what quarter it's coming," said Heathcote, despondingly.

If neither felt much disposed to converse, they each drank deeply; and although scarcely more than a word or two would pass between them, they sat thus, hour after hour, till it was long past midnight.

It was after a long silence between them that Heathcote said: "I never tried so hard in my life to get drunk, without success. I find it won't do, though; I'm just as clearheaded and as low-spirited as when I started."

"Bosh!" muttered O'Shea, half dreamily.

"It's no such thing!" retorted Heathcote. "At any ordinary time one bottle of that strong Burgundy would have gone to my head; and see, now I don't feel it."

"Maybe you 're fretting about something. It's perhaps a weight on your heart--"

"That's it!" sighed out the other, as though the very avowal were an inexpressible relief to him.

"Is it for a woman?" asked O'Shea.

The other nodded, and then leaned his head on his hand.

"Upon my conscience, I sometimes think they 're worse than the Jews,"

said the Member, violently; "and there's no being 'up to them.'"

"It's our own fault, then," cried Heathcote; "because we never play fairly with them."

"Bosh!" muttered O'Shea, again.

"I defy you to deny it," cried he, angrily.

"I 'd like a five-pound note to argue it either way," said O'Shea.

As if offended by the levity of the speech, Heathcote turned away and said nothing.

"When you get down to Rome, and have some fun over those ox-fences, you 'll forget all about her, whoever she is," said O'Shea.

"I'm for England to-morrow, and for India next week, if they 'll have me."

"Well, if that's not madness--"

"No, sir, it is not," broke in Heathoote, angrily; "nor will I permit you or any other man to call it so."

"What I meant was, that when a fellow had _your_ prospects before him, India ought n't to tempt him, even with the offer of the Governor-Generalship."

"Forgive me my bad temper, like a good fellow," cried Heathoote, grasping the other's band; "but, in honest truth, I have no prospects, no future, and there is not a more hopeless wretch to be found than the man before you."

O'Shea was very near saying "Bosh!" once more, but he coughed it under.

Like all bashful men who have momentarily given way to impatience, Charles Heathoote was over eager to obtain his companion's good will, and so he dashed at once into a full confession of all the difficulties that beset, and all the cares that surrounded him. O'Shea had never known accurately, till now, the amount of May Leslie's fortune, nor how completely she was the mistress of her own fate. Neither had he ever heard of that strange provision in the will which imposed a forfeit upon her if unwilling to accept Charles Heathcote as her husband,--a condition which he shrewdly judged to be the very surest of all ways to prevent their marriage.

"And so you released her?" cried he, as Heathoote finished his narrative.

"Released her! No. I never considered that she was bound. How could I?"

"Upon my conscience," muttered the O'Shea, "it is a hard case--a mighty hard case--to see one's way in; for if, as you say, it's not a worthy part for a man to compel a girl to be his wife Just because her father put it in his will, it's very cruel to lose her only because she has a fine property."

"It is for no such reason," broke in Heathoote, half angrily. "I was unwilling--I am unwilling--that May Leslie should be bound by a contract she never shared in.

"That's all balderdash!" cried O'Shea, with energy.

"What do you mean, sir?" retorted the other, passionately.

"What I mean is this," resumed he: "that it's all balder-dash to talk of the hardship of doing things that we never planned out for ourselves.

Sure, ain't we doing them every moment of our lives? Ain't I doing something because you contrived it? and ain't you doing something else because I left it in your way?"

"It comes to this, then, that you 'd marry a girl who did n't care for you, if the circumstances were such as to oblige her to accept you?"

"Not absolutely,--not unreservedly," replied O'Shea.

"Well, what is the reservation? Let us hear it."

"Her fortune ought to be suitable."

"Oh, this is monstrous!"