the door, calling out at the
same moment--

'I say, sir, time's up, if you please.'

The next moment I was before him.

Mr. Ulick Burke--for I need not say it was he--was a well-looking man,
of about eight-and-twenty or thirty years of age. Although his height
was below the middle size, he was powerfully and strongly made; his
features would have been handsome, were it not for a certain expression
of vulgar suspicion that played about the eyes, giving him a sidelong
look when he spoke; this, and the loss of two front teeth from a fall,
disfigured a face originally pleasing. His whiskers were large, bushy,
and meeting beneath his chin. As to his dress, it was in character with
his calling--a green coat cut round in jockey fashion, over which he
wore a white 'bang-up,' as it was called, in one pocket of which was
carelessly thrust a lash-whip; a belcher handkerchief, knotted loosely
about his neck, buckskin breeches, reaching far down upon the leg, and
top-boots completed his costume. I had almost forgotten a hat, perhaps
the most characteristic thing of all. This, which once had been white,
was now, by stress of time and weather, of a dirty drab colour, its
crown dinged in several places, and the leaf jagged and broken, bespoke
the hard usage to which it was subjected. While speaking, he held it
firmly clutched in his ungloved hand, and from time to time struck it
against his thigh, with an energy of manner that seemed habitual His
manner was a mixture of timid embarrassment and vulgar assurance,
feeling his way, as it were, with one, while he forgot himself with the
other. With certain remnants of the class he originally belonged to,
he had associated the low habitudes and slang phraseology of his daily
associates, making it difficult for one, at first sight, to discover to
which order he belonged. In the language of his companions, Click Burke
'could be a gentleman when he pleased it.'

How often have we heard this phrase, and with what a fatal mistake is
it generally applied! He who can be a gentleman when he pleases, never
pleases to be anything else. Circumstances may, and do, every day in
life, throw men of cultivated minds and refined habits into the society
of their inferiors; but while, with the tact and readiness that is their
especial prerogative, they make themselves welcome among those with whom
they have few, if any, sympathies in common, yet never by any accident
do they derogate from that high standar