ll write to me soon, of course; and as that
old fool Corny follows me in a week----'

'And is Corny going abroad?'

'Ay, confound him! like the old man in Sindbad, there 's no getting
him off one's shoulders. Besides, he has a kind of superstition that he
ought to close the eyes of the last of the family; and as he has frankly
confessed to me this morning he knows I am in that predicament, he
esteems it a point of duty to accompany me. Poor fellow, with all his
faults, I can't help feeling attached to him; and were I to leave him
behind me, what would become of him? No, Jack, I am fully sensible of
all the inconvenience, all the ridicule of this step, but, 'faith, I
prefer both to the embittering reflection I should have did I desert
him.'

'Why does he remain after you, Phil? He 'll never find his way to
London.'

'Oh, trust him! What with scolding, cursing, and abusing every one he
meets, he'll attract notice enough on the road never to be forgotten, or
left behind. But the fact is, it is his own proposition; and Corny
has asked for a few days' leave of absence, for the first time for
seven-and-twenty years!'

'And what the deuce can that be for?'

'You 'd never guess if you tried until to-morrow--to see his mother.'

'Corny's mother! Corny Delany's mother!'

'Just so--his mother. Ah, Hinton! you still have much to learn about us
all here. And now, before we part, let me instruct you on this point;
not that I pretend to have a reason for it, nor do I know that there
is any, but somehow I'll venture to say that whenever you meet with a
little cross-grained, ill-conditioned, ill-thriven old fellow, with a
face as if carved in the knot of a crab-tree, the odds are about fifteen
to one that the little wretch has a mother alive. Whether it is that the
tenacity of life among such people is greater, or whether Nature has
any peculiar objects of her own in view in the matter, I can't say, but
trust me for the fact. And now, I believe, I have run myself close to
time; so once more, Jack, good-bye, and God bless you!'

He hurried from the room as he spoke, but, as the door was closing, I
saw that his lip trembled and his cheek was pale; while I leaned against
the window-shutter and looked after him with a heavy and oppressed
heart, for he was my first friend in the world.

CHAPTER XIX. THE CANAL-BOAT

In obedience to O'Grady's directions, of which, fortunately for me,
he left a memorandum in writing, I start