illage, I take care to show by my
inattention that I have not heard the answer, nor do I care for it.

Now I should like to hear how they are canvassing me in the bar, and
what they think of me in the stable. I am, doubtless, a peer, or a
peer's eldest son. I am a great writer, the wondrous poet of the day; or
the pre-Raphaelite artist; or I am a youth heart-broken by infidelity in
love; or, mayhap, a dreadful criminal. I liked this last the best, the
interest was so intense; not to say that there is, to men who are not
constitutionally courageous, a strong pleasure in being able to excite
terror in others.

But I hear a horse's feet on the silent street. I look out Day is just
breaking. Tim is holding Blondel at the door. My hour of adventure has
struck, and noiselessly descending the stairs, I issue forth.

"He is a trifle tender on the fore-feet, your honor," said Tim, as I
mounted; "but when you get him off the stones on a nice piece of soft
road, he 'll go like a four-year-old."

"But he _is_ young, Tim, isn't he?" I asked, as I tendered him my
half-crown.

"Well, not to tell your honor a lie, he is not," said Tim, with the
energy of a man whose veracity had cost him little less than a spasm.

"How old would you call him, then?" I asked, in that affected ease that
seemed to say, "Not that it matters to me if he were Methuselah."

"I could n't come to his age exactly, your honor," he replied, "but I
remember seeing him fifteen years ago, dancing a hornpipe, more by token
for his own benefit; it was at Cooke's Circus, in Abbey Street, and
there wasn't a hair's difference between him now and then, except,
perhaps, that he had a star on the forehead, where you just see the mark
a little darker now."

"But that is a star, plain enough," said I, half vexed.

"Well, it is, and it is not," muttered Tim, doggedly, for he was not
quite satisfied with my right to disagree with him.

"He's gentle, at all events?" I said, more confidently.

"He's a lamb!" replied Tim. "If you were to see the way he lets the
Turks run over his back, when he's wounded in Timour the Tartar, you
wouldn't believe he was a livin' baste."

"Poor fellow!" said I, caressing him. He turned his mild eye upon me,
and we were friends from that hour.

What a glorious morning it was, as I gained the outskirts of the city,
and entered one of those shady alleys that lead to the foot of the
Dublin mountains! The birds were opening their morning hy