rticular time the doctor was a
specially good sleeper. The contrary stands admitted; and I don't ask
you, sagacious reader, to lay any sort of stress upon his dreams; only
as there came a time when people talked of them a good deal over the
fireside in Chapelizod, and made winter's tales about them, I thought
myself obliged to tell you that such things were.

He did not choose to narrate them to his brother-officers, and to be
quizzed about them at mess. But he opened his budget to old Dr.
Walsingham, of course, only as a matter to be smiled at by a pair of
philosophers like them. But Dr. Walsingham, who was an absent man, and
floated upon the ocean of his learning serenely and lazily, drawn finely
and whimsically, now hither, now thither, by the finest hair of
association, glided complacently off into the dim region of visionary
prognostics and warnings, and reminded him how Joseph dreamed, and
Pharaoh, and Benvenuto, Cellini's father, and St. Dominick's mother, and
Edward II. of England, and dodged back and forward among patriarchs and
pagans, and modern Christians, men and women not at all suspecting that
he was making poor Sturk, who had looked for a cheerful, sceptical sort
of essay, confoundedly dismal and uncomfortable.

And, indeed, confoundedly distressed he must have been, for he took his
brother-chip, Tom Toole, whom he loved not, to counsel upon his case--of
course, strictly as a question of dandelion, or gentian, or camomile
flowers; and Tom, who, as we all know, loved him reciprocally,
frightened him as well as he could, offered to take charge of his case,
and said, looking hard at him out of the corner of his cunning, resolute
little eye, as they sauntered in the park--

'But I need not tell _you_, my good Sir, that physic is of
small avail, if there is any sort of--a--a--vexation, or--or--in
short--a--a--_vexation,_ you know, on your mind.'

'A--ha, ha, ha!--what? Murdered my father, and married my grandmother?'
snarled Sturk, sneeringly, amused or affecting to be so, and striving to
laugh at the daisies before his toes, as he trudged along, with his
hands in his breeches' pockets. 'I have not a secret on earth, Sir. 'Tis
not a button to me, Sir, who talks about me; and I don't owe a guinea,
Sir, that is, that I could not pay to-morrow, if I liked it; and there's
nothing to trouble me--nothing, Sir, except this dirty, little, gouty
dyspepsy, scarce worth talking about.

Then came a considerable sile