ormation:--

"When my father--the heavens be his bed!--was in the 'Cork,' they put him
one night on guard at that same big house you just passed, av it was the
same; but if it wasn't that, it was another. And it was a beautiful fine
night in August and the moon up, and plenty of people walking about,
and all kinds of fun and devilment going on,--drinking and dancing and
everything.

"Well, my father was stuck up there with his musket, to walk up and down,
and not say, 'God save you kindly,' or the time of day or anything, but
just march as if he was in the barrack-yard; and by reason of his being the
man he was he didn't like it half, but kept cursing and swearing to himself
like mad when he saw pleasant fellows and pretty girls going by, laughing
and joking.

"'Good-evening, Mickey,' says one. 'Fine sport ye have all to yourself,
with your long feather in your cap.'

"'Arrah, look how proud he is,' says another, 'with his head up as if he
didn't see a body.'

"'Shoulder, hoo!' cried a drunken chap, with a shovel in his hand. Then
they all began laughing away at my father.

"'Let the dacent man alone,' said an ould fellow in a wig. 'Isn't he
guarding the bank, wid all the money in it?'

"'Faix, he isn't,' says another; 'for there's none left.'

"'What's that you're saying?' says my father.

"'Just that the bank's broke; devil a more!' says he.

"'And there's no goold in it?' says my father.

'"Divil a guinea.'

"'Nor silver?'

"'No, nor silver; nor as much as sixpence, either.'

"'Didn't ye hear that all day yesterday when the people was coming in with
their notes, the chaps there were heating the guineas in a frying-pan,
pretending that they were making them as fast as they could; and sure, when
they had a batch red-hot they spread them out to cool; and what betune the
hating and the cooling, and the burning the fingers counting them, they
kept the bank open to three o'clock, and then they ran away.'

"'Is it truth yer telling?' says my father.

"'Sorra word o' lie in it! Myself had two-and-fourpence of their notes.'

"'And so they're broke,' says my father, 'and nothing left?'

"'Not a brass farden.'

"'And what am I staying here for, I wonder, if there's nothing to guard?'

"'Faix, if it isn't for the pride of the thing--'

"'Oh, sorra taste!'

"'Well, may be for divarsion.'

"'Nor that either.'

"'Faix, then you're a droll man, to spend the evening that way,' says he;
and all the crowd