slender neck was ticketed the usual slip of paper. My endeavours
to decypher the writing occupied time sufficient again to make O'Flaherty
ask,

"Well, Harry, I'm waiting for you. Will you have port?"

"No, I thank you," I replied, having by this revealed the inscription.
"No, I thank you; I'll just stick to my old friend here, Bob M'Grotty;"
for thus I rendered familiarly the name of Rt. M'Grotty on the decanter,
and which I in my ignorance believed to be the boarding-house soubriquet
for bad sherry. That Mr. M'Grotty himself little relished my familiarity
with either his name or property I had a very decisive proof, for turning
round upon his chair, and surveying my person from head to foot with a
look of fiery wrath, he thundered out in very broad Scotch,

"And by my saul, my freend, ye may just as weel finish it noo, for deil a
glass o' his ain wine did Bob M'Grotty, as ye ca' him, swallow this day."

The convulsion of laughter into which my blunder and the Scotchman's
passion threw the whole board, lasted till the cloth was withdrawn, and
the ladies had retired to the drawing-room, the only individual at table
not relishing the mistake being the injured proprietor of the bottle, who
was too proud to accept reparation from my friend's decanter, and would
scarcely condescend to open his lips during the evening; notwithstanding
which display of honest indignation, we contrived to become exceedingly
merry and jocose, most of the party communicating little episodes of
their life, in which, it is true, they frequently figured in situations
that nothing but their native and natural candour would venture to avow.
One story I was considerably amused at; it was told by the counsellor,
Mr. Daly, in illustration of the difficulty of rising at the bar, and
which, as showing his own mode of obviating the delay that young
professional men submit to from hard necessity, as well as in evidence of
his strictly legal turn, I shall certainly recount, one of these days,
for the edification of the junior bar.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE CHASE.

On the morning after my visit to the boarding-house, I received a few
hurried lines from Curzon, informing me that no time was to be lost in
joining the regiment--that a grand fancy ball was about to be given by
the officers of the Dwarf frigate, then stationed off Dunmore; who, when
inviting the ___, specially put in a demand for my well-known services,
to make it to go off, and concludi