me over at
this uncivilized hour, hoping to find you alone."

Mr. Blake's look for a moment was one of triumphant satisfaction; it was
but a glance, however, and repressed the very instant after, as he said,
with a well got-up indifference,--

"Just step with me into the study, and we're sure not to be interrupted."

Now, although I have little time or space for such dallying, I cannot help
dwelling for a moment upon the aspect of what Mr. Blake dignified with the
name of his study. It was a small apartment with one window, the panes of
which, independent of all aid from a curtain, tempered the daylight through
the medium of cobwebs, dust, and the ill-trained branches of some wall-tree
without.

Three oak chairs and a small table were the only articles of furniture,
while around, on all sides, lay the _disjecta membra_ of Mr. Blake's
hunting, fishing, shooting, and coursing equipments,--old top-boots,
driving whips, odd spurs, a racing saddle, a blunderbuss, the helmet of the
Galway Light Horse, a salmon net, a large map of the county with a marginal
index to several mortgages marked with a cross, a stable lantern, the
rudder of a boat, and several other articles representative of his daily
associations; but not one book, save an odd volume of Watty Cox's
Magazine, whose pages seemed as much the receptacle of brown hackles for
trout-fishing as the resource of literary leisure.

"Here we'll be quite cosey, and to ourselves," said Mr. Blake, as, placing
a chair for me, he sat down himself, with the air of a man resolved to
assist, by advice and counsel, the dilemma of some dear friend.

After a few preliminary observations, which, like a breathing canter before
a race, serves to get your courage up, and settle you well in your seat,
I opened my negotiation by some very broad and sweeping truisms about the
misfortunes of a bachelor existence, the discomforts of his position,
his want of home and happiness, the necessity for his one day thinking
seriously about marriage; it being in a measure almost as inevitable
a termination of the free-and-easy career of his single life as
transportation for seven years is to that of a poacher. "You cannot go on,
sir," said I, "trespassing forever upon your neighbors' preserves; you must
be apprehended sooner or later; therefore, I think, the better way is to
take out a license."

Never was a small sally of wit more thoroughly successful. Mr. Blake
laughed till he cried, and when