staff. 'We've capital horses
here, if you want to go on to Leixlip,' (where--this between ourselves
and the reader--during the summer months His Excellency and Lady
Townshend resided, and where, the old newspapers tell us, they 'kept a
public day every Monday,' and he 'had a levee, as usual, every
Thursday.') But this had no better success.

'If you design to stay over the day, and care for shooting, we'll have
some ball practice on Palmerstown fair-green to-day. Seven baronies to
shoot for ten and five guineas. One o'clock, hey?'

At this moment entered Major O'Neill, of the Royal Irish Artillery, a
small man, very neatly got up, and with a decidedly Milesian cast of
countenance, who said little, but smiled agreeably--

'Gentlemen, your most obedient. Ha, doctor; how goes it?--anything
new--anything _on_ the _Freeman_?'

Toole had scanned that paper, and hummed out, as he rumpled it
over,--'nothing--very--particular. Here's Lady Moira's ball: fancy
dresses--all Irish; no masks; a numerous appearance of the nobility and
gentry--upwards of five hundred persons. A good many of your corps
there, major?'

'Ay, Lord Blackwater, of course, and the general, and Devereux, and
little Puddock, and----'

'_Sturk_ wasn't,' with a grin, interrupted Toole, who bore that
practitioner no good-will. 'A gentleman robbed, by two foot-pads, on
Chapelizod-road, on Wednesday night, of his watch and money, together
with his hat, wig and cane, and lies now in a dangerous state, having
been much abused; one of them dressed in an old light-coloured coat,
wore a wig. By Jupiter, major, if I was in General Chattesworth's place,
with two hundred strapping fellows at my orders, I'd get a commission
from Government to clear that road. It's too bad, Sir, we can't go in
and out of town, unless in a body, after night-fall, but at the risk of
our lives. [The convivial doctor felt this public scandal acutely.] The
bloody-minded miscreants, I'd catch every living soul of them, and burn
them alive in tar-barrels. By Jove! here's old Joe Napper, of
Dirty-lane's dead. Plenty of dry eyes after _him_. And stay, here's
another row.' And so he read on.

In the meantime, stout, tightly-braced Captain Cluffe of the same corps,
and little dark, hard-faced, and solemn Mr. Nutter, of the Mills, Lord
Castlemallard's agents, came in, and half a dozen more, chiefly members
of the club, which met by night in the front parlour on the left,
opposite the bar, where