ompound which was to be seen
in a tumbler on the chimney-shelf just above his head. It was now six
o'clock in the evening, and the gentleman no doubt had dined.

"Well, Aby; here I am, as large as life, but as cold as death. Ugh;
what an affair that coach is! Fanny, my best of darlings, give me a
drop of something that's best for warming the cockles of an old man's
heart."

"A young wife then is the best thing in life to do that, Mr.
Mollett," said Fanny, sharply, preparing, however, at the same time
some mixture which might be taken more instantaneously.

"The governor's had enough of that receipt already," said the man
on the sofa; or rather the man now off the sofa, for he had slowly
arisen to shake hands with the new comer.

This latter person proceeded to divest himself of his dripping
greatcoat. "Here, Tom," said he, "bring your old Cyclops eye to bear
this way, will you. Go and hang that up in the kitchen; not too near
the fire now; and get me something to eat: none of your mutton chops;
but a beefsteak if there is such a thing in this benighted place.
Well, Aby, how goes on the war?"

It was clear that the elderly gentleman was quite at home in his
present quarters; for Tom, far from resenting such impertinence, as
he would immediately have done had it proceeded from an ordinary
Kanturk customer, declared "that he would do his honour's bidding av
there was such a thing as a beefsteak to be had anywhere's in the
city of Cork."

And indeed the elderly gentleman was a person of whom one might
premise, judging by his voice and appearance, that he would probably
make himself at home anywhere. He was a hale hearty man, of perhaps
sixty years of age, who had certainly been handsome, and was even
now not the reverse. Or rather, one may say, that he would have been
so were it not that there was a low, restless, cunning legible in
his mouth and eyes, which robbed his countenance of all manliness.
He was a hale man, and well preserved for his time of life; but
nevertheless, the extra rubicundity of his face, and certain
incipient pimply excrescences about his nose, gave tokens that he
lived too freely. He had lived freely; and were it not that his
constitution had been more than ordinarily strong, and that constant
exercise and exposure to air had much befriended him, those pimply
excrescences would have shown themselves in a more advanced stage.
Such was Mr. Mollett senior--Mr. Matthew Mollett, with whom it will