ou, captain, _that's_ the chat--how the divil to get
you alive out o' the position you're in. Can you swim?'

'No, Thir.'

'An' how the dickens did you get there?'

'I'd rather hear, Sir, how I'm to get away, if you please,' replied
Puddock, loftily.

'Are you bare-legged?' shouted the man.

'No, Sir,' answered the little officer, rather shocked.

'An' you're there wid shoes on your feet.

'Of course, Sir,' answered Puddock.

'Chuck them into the water this instant minute,' roared the man.

'Why, there are valuable buckles, Sir,' remonstrated Puddock.

'Do you mane to say you'd rather be dhrownded in yer buckles than alive
in yer stockin' feet?' he replied.

There were some cross expostulations, but eventually the fellow came out
to Puddock. Perhaps the feat was not quite so perilous as he
represented; but it certainly was not a pleasant one. Puddock had a rude
and crazy sort of banister to cling to, and a rugged and slippery
footing; but slowly and painfully, from one post to another, he made his
way, and at last jumped on the solid, though not dry land, his life and
his buckles safe.

'I'll give you a guinea in the morning, if you come to my quarterth, Mr.
---- Thir,' and, without waiting a second, away he ran by the footpath,
and across the bridge, right into the Phoenix, and burst into the
club-room. There were assembled old Arthur Slowe, Tom Trimmer, from
Lucan, old Trumble, Jack Collop, Colonel Stafford, and half-a-dozen more
members, including some of the officers--O'Flaherty among the number, a
little 'flashy with liquor' as the phrase then was.

Puddock stood in the wide opened door, with the handle in his hand. He
was dishevelled, soused with water, bespattered with mud, his round face
very pale, and he fixed a wild stare on the company. The clatter of old
Trimmer's backgammon, Slowe's disputations over the draftboard with
Colonel Stafford, Collop's dissertation on the points of that screw of a
horse he wanted to sell, and the general buzz of talk, were all almost
instantaneously suspended on the appearance of this phantom, and Puddock
exclaimed--

'Gentlemen, I'm thorry to tell you, Captain Cluffe ith, I fear,
drowned!'

'Cluffe?' 'Drowned?' 'By Jupiter!' 'You don't say so? and a round of
such ejaculations followed this announcement.

Allow me here to mention that I permit my people to swear by all the
persons of the Roman mythology. There was a horrible profanity in the
matter of oaths i