fine-looking
girl, too," added he, after an interval. "I wish I knew her sweetheart,
for she surely has one. Terry, Terry, ye must bestir yourself; ye must
be up early and go to bed late, my boy. You 're not the man ye were
before ye had that 'faver,'--that spotted faver!"--here he laughed till
his eyes ran over. "What a poor crayture it has left ye; no memory, no
head for anything!" And he actually shook with laughter at the thought.
"Poor Terry Driscoll, ye are to be pitied!" said he, as he wiped the
tears from his face. "Is n't it a sin and a shame there's no one to look
after ye?"

CHAPTER XIX. DRISCOLL IN CONFERENCE

"Not come in yet, sir; but he is sure to be back soon," said Mr. Clowes,
the butler, to Terry Driscoll, as he stood in the hall of Mr. Davenport
Dunn's house, about eleven o'clock of the same night we have spoken of
in our last chapter.

"You're expecting him, then?" asked Driscoll, in his own humble manner.

"Yes, sir," said Clowes, looking at his watch; "he ought to be here
now. We have a deal of business to get through to-night, and several
appointments to keep; but he'll see you, Mr. Driscoll. He always gives
directions to admit _you_ at once."

"Does he really?" asked Driscoll, with an air of perfect innocence.

"Yes," said Clowes, in a tone at once easy and patronizing, "he likes
_you_. You are one of the very few who can amuse him. Indeed, I don't
think I ever heard him laugh, what I 'd call a hearty laugh, except when
you 're with him."

"Isn't that quare, now!" exclaimed Driscoll. "Lord knows it's little fun
is in me now!"

"Come in and take a chair; charge you nothing for the sitting," said
Clowes, laughing at his own smartness as he led the way into a most
comfortably furnished little room which formed his own sanctum.

The walls were decorated with colored prints and drawings of great
projected enterprises,--peat fuel manufactories of splendid
pretensions, American packet stations on the west coast, of almost regal
architecture, vied with ground-plans of public parks and ornamental
model farms; fish-curing institutions, and smelting-houses, and
beetroot-sugar buildings, graced scenes of the very wildest desolation,
and, by an active representation of life and movement, seemed to typify
the wealth and prosperity which enterprise was sure to carry into
regions the very dreariest and least promising.

"A fine thing, that, Mr. Driscoll!" said Clowes, as Terry stood
admiring