.

'And--and--and--you don't mean to thay--why--eh?' asked Puddock,
uneasily.

'I tell you what, Puddock--there's no use in purtendin'--the poison's
working--_that's_ what's the matter,' returned poor O'Flaherty, in what
romance writers call 'a hissing whisper.'

'Good--merthiful--graciouth--Thir!' ejaculated poor little Puddock, in a
panic, and gazing up into the brawny fireworker's face with a pallid
fascination; indeed they both looked unpleasantly unlike the popular
conception of heroes on the eve of battle.

'But--but it can't be--you forget Dr. Sturk and--oh, dear!--the
antidote. It--I thay--it can't _be_, Thir,' said Puddock, rapidly.

'It's no use, now; but I shirked two or three spoonfuls, and I left some
more in the bottom,' said the gigantic O'Flaherty, with a gloomy
sheepishness.

Puddock made an ejaculation--the only violent one recorded of him--and
turning his back briskly upon his principal, actually walked several
steps away, as if he intended to cut the whole concern. But such a
measure was really not to be thought of.

'O'Flaherty--Lieutenant--I won't reproach you,' began Puddock.

'_Reproach_ me! an' who _poisoned_ me, my tight little fellow?' retorted
the fireworker, savagely.

Puddock could only look at him, and then said, quite meekly--

'Well, and my dear Thir, what on earth had we better do?'

'Do,' said O'Flaherty, 'why isn't it completely Hobson's choice with us?
What can we do but go through with it?'

The fact is, I may as well mention, lest the sensitive reader should be
concerned for the gallant O'Flaherty, that the poison had very little to
do with it, and the antidote a great deal. In fact, it was a reckless
compound conceived in a cynical and angry spirit by Sturk, and as the
fireworker afterwards declared, while expressing in excited language his
wonder how Puddock (for he never suspected Sturk's elixir) had contrived
to compound such a poison--'The torture was such, my dear Madam, as
fairly thranslated me into the purlieus of the other world.'

Nutter had already put off his coat and waistcoat, and appeared in a
neat little black lutestring vest, with sleeves to it, which the elder
officers of the R.I.A. remembered well in by-gone fencing matches.

'Tis a most _miserable_ situation,' said Puddock, in extreme distress.

'Never mind,' groaned O'Flaherty, grimly taking off his coat; 'you'll
have _two_ corpses to carry home with you; don't you show the laste
taste iv unai