on the streets."

Basset leaned his head on the chimney, and seemed sunk in reflection;
while I, wound up to the highest pitch of excitement, trod up and down
the room, pouring forth from time to time short and broken sentences,
declaratory of my desire to surrender all that I might chance to inherit
by every casualty in life, to my last guinea, only let there be no
constraint on my actions, no attempt to control my personal liberty.

"I see," cried I, passionately,--"I see what hampers you. You fear I may
compromise my family! It is my brother's fair fame you are thinking of.
But away with all dread on that score. I 'll leave Ireland; I have long
since determined on that."

"Indeed!" said Basset, slowly, as he turned round his head, and looked
me full in the face.

"Would you go to America, then?"

"To America? No,--to France! That shall be the land of my adoption, as
it is this moment of all my heart's longings."

His eyes sparkled, and a gleam of pleasure shot across his cold
features, as if he caught a glow of the enthusiasm that lit up mine.

"Come," cried he, "I 'll think of this. Give me till tomorrow, and if
you 'll pledge yourself to leave Ireland within a week--"

"I 'll pledge myself to nothing of the kind," replied I, fiercely. "It
is to be free,--free in thought as in act,--that I would barter all my
prospects with you. There must be but one compact between us,--it must
begin and end here. Take a night if you will to think it over, and
to-morrow morning--"

"Well, then, to-morrow morning be it," said he, with more of animation
in his tone; "and now to supper!"

"To bed, rather," said I, "if I may speak my mind; for rest is what I
now stand most in need of."

CHAPTER XVII. MR. BASSET'S DWELLING

Excepting the two dingy-looking, dust-covered parlors, which served
as office and dining-room, the only portion of Mr. Basset's dwelling
untenanted by lodgers was the attics. The large brass plate that adorned
the hall door, setting forth in conspicuous letters, "Anthony Basset,
Attorney," gave indeed a most inadequate notion of the mixed population
within, whose respectability, in the inverse ratio of their height
from the ground, went on growing beautifully less, till it found its
culminating point in the host himself, on whose venerable head the light
streamed from a cobweb-covered pane in the roof. The stairs were dark
and narrow; the walls covered with a dull-colored old wainscot, that
flapp