eeches, plase your honor."

"Why, you don't mean to tell me--By Heaven, this is too good!" shouted
Tom, bursting into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. "Why, Barney, you
don't mean to say the ghost has got them again?"

Mr. Maguire did not respond to the young squire's risibility; the cast
of his countenance was decidedly serious.

"Faith, then, it's gone they are sure enough! Hasn't meself been looking
over the bed, and under the bed, and _in_ the bed, for the matter of
that, and divil a ha'p'orth of breeches is there to the fore at
all:--I'm bothered entirely!"

"Hark'ee! Mr. Barney," said Tom, incautiously removing his thumb, and
letting a crimson stream "incarnadine the multitudinous" lather that
plastered his throat--"this may be all very well with your master, but
you don't humbug _me_, sir:--Tell me instantly what have you done with
the clothes?"

This abrupt transition from "lively to severe" certainly took Maguire by
surprise, and he seemed for an instant as much disconcerted as it is
possible to disconcert an Irish gentleman's gentleman.

"Me? is it meself, then, that's the ghost to your honor's thinking?"
said he after a moment's pause, and with a slight shade of indignation
in his tones; "is it I would stale the master's things--and what would I
do with them?"

"That you best know: what your purpose is I can't guess, for I don't
think you mean to 'stale' them, as you call it; but that you are
concerned in their disappearance, I am satisfied. Confound this
blood!--give me a towel, Barney."

Maguire acquitted himself of the commission. "As I've a sowl, your
honor," said he, solemnly, "little it is meself knows of the matter: and
after what I seen----"

"What you've seen! Why, what _have_ you seen?--Barney, I don't want to
inquire into your flirtations; but don't suppose you can palm off your
saucer eyes and gig-lamps upon me!"

"Then, as sure as your honor's standing there, I saw him: and why
wouldn't I, when Miss _Pauline_ was to the fore as well as meself,
and----"

"Get along with your nonsense--leave the room, sir!"

"But the master?" said Barney, imploringly; "and without a
breeches?--sure he'll be catching cowld----!"

"Take that, rascal!" replied Ingoldsby, throwing a pair of pantaloons
at, rather than to, him: "but don't suppose, sir, you shall carry on
your tricks here with impunity; recollect there is such a thing as a
treadmill, and that my father is a county magistrate."

Barney'