n plain words, I could not bring myself
to do with premeditation what once I might have done from recklessness."

"And so the scruple saved Polly?" cried my father.

"Just so; not that I had much time to reflect on it, for the blacks were
pulling fearfully, and Dan had smashed his splinter-bar with a kick.
Still, in coming up by the new shrubbery there, I did say to myself:
'Which road shall I take?' The ponies were going to decide the matter
for me; but I turned them short round with a jerk, and laid the whip
over their flanks with a cut,--the dearest, assuredly, I ever gave to
horseflesh, for it cost me, in all likelihood, three hundred thousand."

"Who 'd have ever thought Dan MacNaghten's conscience would have been so
expensive!"

"By Jove, Watty, it's the only thing of value remaining to me. Perhaps
my creditors left it on the same polite principle that they allow a
respectable bankrupt to keep his snuff-box or his wife's miniature,--a
cheap complaisance that reads well in the newspapers."

"The Grinder, of course, thought that he had seen the last of you," said
my father, laughing.

"He as much as said so to me when I came back. He even went further,"
said Dan, reddening with anger as he spoke: "he proposed to me to go
abroad and travel, and that he would pay the cost. But he 'll scarcely
repeat the insolence."

"Why, what has come over you all here? I scarcely know you for what I
left you some short time back. Dan Mac-Naghten taking to scruples, and
Tony Fagan to generosity, seem, indeed, too much for common credulity!
And now as to politics, Dan! What are our friends doing? for I own to
you I have not opened one of Bagwell's letters since I left Paris."

"You 're just as wise as if you had. Tom has got into all that
Rotundo cant about the 'Convention,' and the 'Town Council,' and the
'Sub-Committee of Nine,' so that you'd not make anything out of the
correspondence. I believe the truth is, that the Bishop is mad, and they
who follow him are fools. The Government at first thought of buying them
over; but they now perceive it's a cheaper and safer expedient to
leave them to themselves and their own-indiscretions. But I detest the
subject; and as we 'll have nothing else talked of to-day at dinner,
I'll cry truce till then. Let us have a look at the stable, Watty. I
want to talk to you about the 'nags.'" And so saying, MacNaghten arose
from table, and, taking my father's arm, led him away into the garden.