ot likely to look
forward with much pleasure to the breakfast-parlour. But before
breakfast sleep was to intervene--that is, for those who could get
it--and the unfortunate Furlong was not amongst the number. Despite the
very best feather bed Mrs. O'Grady had selected for him from amongst her
treasures, it was long before slumber weighed down his feverish eyelids;
and even then, it was only to have them opened again in some convulsive
start of a troubled dream. All his adventures of the last four-and-twenty
hours were jumbled together in strange confusion--now on a lonely road,
while dreading the assaults of robbers, his course was interrupted not
by a highwayman, but a river, whereon embarking, he began to catch
salmon in a most surprisingly rapid manner, but just as he was about to
haul in his fish it escaped from the hook, and the salmon, making wry
faces at him, very impertinently exclaimed, "Sure, you wouldn't catch a
poor, ignorant, Irish salmon?" He then snapped his pistols at the
insolent fish--then his carriage breaks down, and he is suddenly
transferred from the river to the road; thieves seize upon him and bind
his hands, but a charming young lady with pearly teeth frees him from
his bonds, and conducts him to a castle where a party is engaged in
playing cards; he is invited to join, and as his cards are dealt to him
he anticipates triumph in the game, but by some malicious fortune his
trumps are transformed into things of no value, as they touch the board;
he loses his money, and is kicked out when his purse has been emptied,
and he escapes along a dark road pursued by his spoilers, who would take
his life, and a horrid cry of "broiled bones," rings in his ears as he
flies; he is seized and thrown into a river, where, as he sinks, shoals
of salmon raise a chorus of rejoicing, and he wakes out of the agonies
of dream-drowning to find himself nearly suffocated by sinking into the
feathery depths of Mrs. O'Grady's pet bed. After a night passed in such
troubled visions the unfortunate Furlong awoke unrefreshed, and, with
bitter recollections of the past and mournful anticipations of the
future, arose and prepared to descend to the parlour, where a servant
told him breakfast was ready.

His morning greeting by the family was not of that hearty and cheerful
character which generally distinguishes the house of an Irish squire;
for though O'Grady was not so savage as on the preceding evening, he
was rather gruff, an