up, fell into groups, and the greater part sauntered off
to the Phoenix, where, in the club-room, they, with less restraint,
and some new recruits, carried on the pleasures of the evening, which
pleasures, as will sometimes happen, ended in something rather serious.

CHAPTER VII.

SHOWING HOW TWO GENTLEMEN MAY MISUNDERSTAND ONE ANOTHER, WITHOUT
ENABLING THE COMPANY TO UNDERSTAND THEIR QUARREL.

Loftus had by this time climbed to the savage lair of his garret,
overstrewn with tattered papers and books; and Father Roach, in the
sanctuary of his little parlour, was growling over the bones of a
devilled-turkey, and about to soothe his fretted soul in a generous
libation of hot whiskey punch. Indeed, he was of an appeasable nature,
and on the whole a very good fellow.

Dr. Toole, whom the young fellows found along with Nutter over the
draught-board in the club-room, forsook his game to devour the story of
Loftus's Lenten Hymn, and poor Father Roach's penance, rubbed his hands,
and slapped his thigh, and crowed and shouted with ecstasy. O'Flaherty,
who called for punch, and was unfortunately prone to grow melancholy and
pugnacious over his liquor, was now in a saturnine vein of sentiment,
discoursing of the charms of his peerless mistress, the Lady Magnolia
Macnamara--for he was not one of those maudlin shepherds, who pipe their
loves in lonely glens and other sequestered places, but rather loved to
exhibit his bare scars, and roar his tender torments for the edification
of the market-place.

While he was descanting on the attributes of that bewitching 'crature,'
Puddock, not two yards off, was describing, with scarcely less unction,
the perfections of 'pig roast with the hair on:' and the two made a
medley like 'The Roast Beef of Old England,' and 'The Last Rose of
Summer,' arranged in alternate stanzas. O'Flaherty suddenly stopped
short, and said a little sternly to Lieutenant Puddock--

'Does it very much signify, Sir (or as O'Flaherty pronounced it "Sorr,")
whether the animal has hair upon it or not?'

_'Every_ thing, Thir, in thith particular retheipt,' answered Puddock, a
little loftily.

'But,' said Nutter, who, though no great talker, would make an effort to
prevent a quarrel, and at the same time winking to Puddock in token that
O'Flaherty was just a little 'hearty,' and so to let him alone; 'what
signifies pigs' hair, compared with human tresses?'

'Compared with _human_ tresses?' interrupted O'Fla