t he neither would
have told it if he could, nor could if he would; for the Captain was
not only unaccustomed to tell the truth,--he was unable even to think
it--and fact and fiction reeled together in his muzzy, whiskified brain.

He began life rather brilliantly with a pair of colours, a fine person
and legs, and one of the most beautiful voices in the world. To his
latest day he sang with admirable pathos and humour those wonderful
Irish ballads which are so mirthful and so melancholy: and was always
the first himself to cry at their pathos. Poor Cos! he was at once brave
and maudlin, humorous and an idiot; always good-natured, and sometimes
almost trustworthy. Up to the last day of his life he would drink with
any man, and back any man's bill: and his end was in a spunging-house,
where the sheriff's officer, who took him, was fond of him.

In his brief morning of life, Cos formed the delight of regimental
messes, and had the honour of singing his songs, bacchanalian and
sentimental, at the tables of the most illustrious generals and
commanders-in-chief, in the course of which period he drank three times
as much claret as was good for him, and spent his doubtful patrimony.
What became of him subsequently to his retirement from the army, is no
affair of ours. I take it, no foreigner understands the life of an Irish
gentleman without money, the way in which he manages to keep afloat--the
wind-raising conspiracies, in which he engages with heroes as
unfortunate as himself--the means by which he contrives, during most
days of the week, to get his portion of whisky-and-water: all these are
mysteries to us inconceivable: but suffice it to say, that through all
the storms of life Jack had floated somehow, and the lamp of his nose
had never gone out.

Before he and Pen had had a half-hour's conversation, the Captain
managed to extract a couple of sovereigns from the young gentleman for
tickets for his daughter's benefit, which was to take place speedily;
and was not a bona fide transaction such as that of the last year, when
poor Miss Fotheringay had lost fifteen shillings by her venture; but was
an arrangement with the manager, by which the lady was to have the sale
of a certain number of tickets, keeping for herself a large portion of
the sum for which they were sold.

Pen had but two pounds in his purse, and he handed them over to the
Captain for the tickets; he would have been afraid to offer more lest he
should offe