pleases to think a fit subject for your amusement."

"Come then, Doctor, Harry has no objection you see; so out with it, and
we are all prepared to sympathise with your woes and misfortunes,
whatever they be."

"Well, I am sure, I never could think of mentioning it without his leave;
but now that he sees no objection--Eh, do you though? if so, then, don't
be winking and making faces at me; but say the word, and devil a syllable
of it I'll tell to man or mortal."

The latter part of this delectable speech was addressed to me across the
table, in a species of stage whisper, in reply to some telegraphic
signals I had been throwing him, to induce him to turn the conversation
into any other channel.

"Then, that's enough," continued he sotto voce--"I see you'd rather I'd
not tell it."

"Tell it and be d____d," said I, wearied by the incorrigible pertinacity
with which the villain assailed me. My most unexpected energy threw the
whole table into a roar, at the conclusion of which Fin began his
narrative of the mail-coach adventure.

I need not tell my reader, who has followed me throughout in these my
Confessions, that such a story lost nothing of its absurdity, when
entrusted to the Doctor's powers of narration; he dwelt with a poet's
feeling upon the description of his own sufferings, and my sincere
condolence and commiseration; he touched with the utmost delicacy upon
the distant hints by which he broke the news to me; but when he came to
describe my open and undisguised terror, and my secret and precipitate
retreat to the roof of the coach, there was not a man at table that was
not convulsed with laughter---and, shall I acknowledge it, even I myself
was unable to withstand the effect, and joined in the general chorus
against myself.

"Well," said the remorseless wretch, as he finished his story, "if ye
haven't the hard hearts to laugh at such a melancholy subject. Maybe,
however, you're not so cruel after all--here's a toast for you, 'a speedy
recovery to Cusack Rooney.'" This was drank amid renewed peals, with all
the honors; and I had abundant time before the uproar was over, to wish
every man of them hanged. It was to no purpose that I endeavoured to
turn the tables, by describing Fin's terror at my supposed resemblance to
a highwayman---his story had the precedence, and I met nothing during my
recital but sly allusions to mad dogs, muzzles, and doctors; and
contemptible puns were let off on every side at