ther. As Considine had left
me to visit some friends in the south, I was quite alone, and for the first
time in my life, felt how soothing can be such solitude. In each happy
face, in every grateful look around me, I felt that I was fulfilling my
uncle's last behest; and the sense of duty, so strong when it falls upon
the heart accompanied by the sense of power, made my days pass rapidly
away.

It was towards the close of autumn, when I one morning received a letter
from London, informing me that my troop had been sold, and the purchase
money--above four thousand pounds--lodged to my credit at my banker's.

As Mr. Blake had merely answered my former note by a civil message that the
matter in question was by no means pressing, I lost not a moment, when
this news reached me, to despatch Mike to Gurt-na-Morra with a few lines,
expressing my anxious desire to finish the transaction, and begging of Mr.
Blake to appoint a day for the purpose.

To this application Mr. Blake's reply was, that he would do himself the
honor of waiting upon me the following day, when the arrangements I desired
could be agreed upon. Now this was exactly what I wished, if possible,
to avoid. Of all my neighbors, he was the one I predetermined to have no
intercourse with; I had not forgotten my last evening at his house, nor had
I forgiven his conduct to my uncle. However, there was nothing for it but
submission; the interview need not be a long, and it should be a last one.
Thus resolving, I waited in patience for the morrow.

I was seated at my breakfast the next morning, conning between whiles the
columns of the last paper, and feeding my spaniel, who sat upon a large
chair beside me, when the door opened, and the servant announced, "Mr.
Blake;" and the instant after that gentleman bustled in holding out both
his hands with all evidences of most friendly warmth, and calling out,--

"Charley O'Malley, my lad! I'm delighted to see you at last!"

Now, although the distance from the door to the table at which I sat
was not many paces, yet it was quite sufficient to chill down all my
respectable relative's ardor before he approached: his rapid pace became
gradually a shuffle, a slide, and finally a dead stop; his extended arms
were reduced to one hand, barely advanced beyond his waistcoat; his voice,
losing the easy confidence of its former tone, got husky and dry, and broke
into a cough; and all these changes were indebted to the mere fact of
my