ves a great shriek, and I cut my
puck through the hole in the cellar.'

'Be the powers,' remarked Bloody Mike--'it's a great convenience
entirely, to have thim sacret passages from the Vault into intarior of
houses; there's two of thim, one under the crib in Anthony street, and
the other under this dacent house in _Rade_ street.'

'Yes, you're right,' said Pete--'but come, let's do our business and be
off--it's near three o'clock.'

The two worthies mounted the stairs with noiseless steps, and pausing
before Mrs. Belmont's chamber, Ragged Pete gave utterance to an awful
groan. A stifled shriek from the interior of the room convinced them the
inmates were awake and terribly frightened.

Pete's groan was followed by a violent _hiccuping_ on the part of Bloody
Mike--for, to confess the truth, that convivial gentleman had imbibed so
freely that he was, in vulgar parlance, most essentially drunk.

'Stop that infernal noise, and follow me into the room,' whispered Pete,
who, having confined himself to wine instead of brandy, was
comparatively sober.

'Lade on, I'm after ye!' roared the Irish skeleton. Pete, finding the
door locked gave it a tremendous kick, and it burst open with a loud
crash.

Julia and her maid screamed with horror and affright, as they beheld two
hideous forms resembling skeletons come rushing into the room.

Ragged Pete advanced to the bedside of Mrs. Belmont, and threw himself
into an approved pugilistic attitude, as if challenging that lady to
take a 'set to' with him; while Bloody Mike stumbled over the prostrate
form of the lady's maid, who occupied a temporary bed upon the floor.
Forgetting his assumed part, he yelled out for something to drink, and
forthwith began to sing in tones of thunder, the pathetic Hibernian
ballad commencing with--

'A sayman courted a farmer's daughter,
That lived convenient to the Isle of Man.'

'The devil!--you'll spoil all,' muttered Pete, as he seized Mike, and
with difficulty dragged him from the room. 'Ain't you a nice skeleton,
to get drunk and sing love songs,' he whispered contemptuously, pulling
his inebriated comrade downstairs after him: 'No dacent ghost ever gets
as corn'd as you be,' he added, as they entered the 'hole in the wall;'
after which the stone was turned into its place, which it fitted so
exactly, that the most critical eye could not have discovered anything
to indicate that it had ever been moved at all.

Mrs. Belmont was now