which, while he feels like a pauper, he has to fancy he felt like a
gentleman. No, no, I'll none of this. Scores of better men have served in
the ranks. I'll just change my regiment. By a lucky chance, I don't know a
man in the Walmoden Cuirassiers. I'll join them, and nobody will ever be
the wiser.'

There is a class of men who go through life building very small castles,
and are no more discouraged by the frailty of the architecture than is a
child with his toy-house. This was Gorman's case; and now that he had found
a solution of his difficulties in the Walmoden Cuirassiers, he really
dressed for dinner in very tolerable spirits. 'It's droll enough,' thought
he, 'to go down to dine amongst all these "swells," and to think that the
fellow behind my chair is better off than myself.' The very uncertainty
of his fate supplied excitement to his spirits, for it is amongst the
privileges of the young that mere flurry can be pleasurable.

When Gorman reached the drawing-room, he found only one person. This was
a young man in a shooting-coat, who, deep in the recess of a comfortable
arm-chair, sat with the _Times_ at his feet, and to all appearance as if
half dozing.

He looked around, however, as young O'Shea came forward, and said
carelessly, 'I suppose it's time to go and dress--if I could.'

O'Shea making no reply, the other added, 'That is, if I have not overslept
dinner altogether.'

'I hope not, sincerely,' rejoined the other, 'or I shall be a partner in
the misfortune.'

'Ah, you 're the Austrian,' said Walpole, as he stuck his glass in his eye
and surveyed him.

'Yes; and you are the private secretary of the Governor.'

'Only we don't call him Governor. We say Viceroy here.'

'With all my heart, Viceroy be it.'

There was a pause now--each, as it were, standing on his guard to resent
any liberty of the other. At last Walpole said, 'I don't think you were in
the house when that stupid stipendiary fellow called here this morning?'

'No; I was strolling across the fields. He came with the police, I
suppose?'

'Yes, he came on the track of some Fenian leader--a droll thought enough
anywhere out of Ireland, to search for a rebel under a magistrate's roof;
not but there was something still more Irish in the incident.'

'How was that?' asked O'Shea eagerly.

'I chanced to be out walking with the ladies when the escort came, and
as they failed to find the man they were after, they proceeded to make
diligent