ry Mulcaky) having
emptied the contents of her--washing-tub, over my slumbering person.

CHAPTER V.

HOW BOB BURKE, AFTER CONSULTATION WITH WOODEN-LEG
WADDY, FOUGHT THE DUEL WITH ENSIGN BRADY FOR THE
SAKE OF MISS THEODOSIA MACNAMARA.

"At night I had fallen asleep fierce in the determination of
exterminating Brady; but with the morrow, cool reflection came--made
probably cooler by the aspersion I had suffered. How could I fight him,
when he had never given me the slightest affront? To be sure, picking a
quarrel is not hard, thank God, in any part of Ireland; but unless I was
quick about it, he might get so deep into the good graces of Dosy, who
was as flammable as tinder, that even my shooting him might not be of
any practical advantage to myself. Then, besides, he might shoot me;
and, in fact, I was not by any means so determined in the affair at
seven o'clock in the morning as I was at twelve o'clock at night. I got
home, however, dressed, shaved, &c., and turned out. 'I think,' said I
to myself, 'the best thing I can do, is to go and consult Wooden-leg
Waddy; and, as he is an early man, I shall catch him now.' The thought
was no sooner formed than executed; and in less than five minutes I was
walking with Wooden-leg Waddy in his garden, at the back of his house,
by the banks of the Blackwater.

"Waddy had been in the Hundred-and-First, and had seen much service in
that distinguished corps."

"I remember it well during the war," said Antony Harrison; "we used to
call it the Hungry-and-Worst;--but it did its duty on a pinch
nevertheless."

"No matter," continued Burke; "Waddy had served a good deal, and lost
his leg somehow, for which he had a pension besides his half-pay, and he
lived in ease and affluence among the Bucks of Mallow. He was a great
hand at settling and arranging duels, being what we generally call in
Ireland a _judgmatical_ sort of man--a word which, I think, might be
introduced with advantage into the English vocabulary. When I called on
him, he was smoking his meerschaum, as he walked up and down his garden
in an old undress-coat, and a fur cap on his head. I bade him good
morning; to which salutation he answered by a nod, and a more prolonged
whiff.

"'I want to speak to you, Wooden-leg,' said I, 'on a matter which nearly
concerns me.' On which, I received another nod, and another whiff in
reply.

"'The fact is,' said I, 'that there is an Ensign Brady of the 48th
quartered here, wit