he legs of my
unseen companion. "May I request leave to pass you?" While he made way
for me for this purpose, I perceived that he stooped down towards the
guard, and said something, who from his answer had evidently been
questioned as to who I was. "And how did he get here, if he took his
place in Dublin?" asked the unknown.

"Came half an hour since, sir, in a chaise and four," said the guard, as
he banged the door behind him, and closed the interview.

Whatever might have been the reasons for my fellow-traveller's anxiety
about my name and occupation, I knew not, yet could not help feeling
gratified at thinking that as I had not given my name at the coach
office, I was a great a puzzle to him as he to me.

"A severe night, sir," said I, endeavouring to break ground in
conversation.

"Mighty severe," briefly and half crustily replied the unknown, with a
richness of brogue, that might have stood for a certificate of baptism
in Cork or its vicinity.

"And a bad road too, sir," said I, remembering my lately accomplished
stage.

"That's the reason I always go armed," said the unknown, clinking at the
same moment something like the barrel of a pistol.

Wondering somewhat at his readiness to mistake my meaning, I felt
disposed to drop any further effort to draw him out, and was about to
address myself to sleep, as comfortably as I could.

"I'll jist trouble ye to lean aff that little parcel there, sir," said
he, as he displaced from its position beneath my elbow, one of the paper
packages the guard had already alluded to.

In complying with this rather gruff demand, one of my pocket pistols,
which I carried in my breast pocket, fell out upon his knee, upon which
he immediately started, and asked hurriedly--"and are you armed too?"

"Why, yes," said I, laughingly; "men of my trade seldom go without
something of this kind."

"Be gorra, I was just thinking that same," said the traveller, with a
half sigh to himself.

Why he should or should not have thought so, I never troubled myself to
canvass, and was once more settling myself in my corner, when I was
startled by a very melancholy groan, which seemed to come from the bottom
of my companion's heart.

"Are you ill, sir?" said I, in a voice of some anxiety.

"You might say that," replied he--"if you knew who you were talking to
--although maybe you've heard enough of me, though you never saw me till
now."

"Without having that pleasure even yet," said I,