rously vociferous. "By the powers of Poll Kelly!" said the
raw-boned fellow who had howled the lament over the corpse, "I'd be
arter making love to the widow mysel', only it mightn't be altogether
dacent before Teddy's put out o' the way." "You make love to the widow!"
responded the smart-looking Florence M'Carthy; "to the divil I pitch
you, you bouncing bogtrotter! it's myself alone that will have that
onor, bekase Teddy O'Rafferty wished me to take his wife as a legacy.
'It's all I've got, Mr. Florence,' ~32~~said he to me one day, 'to lave
behind for the redemption of the small trifle I owe you.'" "It aint the
like o' either of you that will be arter bamboozling my cousin, Mrs.
Judy O'Rafferty, into a blind bargain," said Barney O'Finn; in whose
noddle the whiskey began to fumigate with the most valorous effect.
"You're a noble-spirited fellow, Barney," said Horace Eglantine, who was
using his best exertions to produce a _row_. "At them again, Barney, and
tell them their conduct is most indecent." Thus stimulated and prompted,
Barney was not tardy in re-echoing the charge; which, as might have been
expected, produced an instantaneous explosion and general battle. In
two minutes the company were thrown into the most appalling scene of
confusion--chairs and tables upset, bludgeons, pewter pots, pipes,
glasses, and other missiles flying about in all directions, until broken
heads and shins were as plentiful as black eyes, and there was no lack
of either--women screaming and children crying, making distress more
horrible. In this state of affairs, Bob Transit had climbed up and
perched himself upon a beam to make observations; while the original
fomenter of the strife, that mad wag Eglantine, had with myself made our
escape through an aperture into the next house, and having secured
our persons from violence were enabled to become calm observers of the
affray, by peeping through the breach by which we had entered. In the
violence of the struggle, poor Teddy O'Rafferty was doomed to experience
another upset before his remains were consigned to the tomb; for just at
the moment that a posse of watchmen and night-constables arrived to
put an end to the broil, such was the panic of the assailants that in
rushing towards the bed to conceal themselves from the _charlies_, they
tumbled poor Teddy head over heels to the floor of his shed, leaving
his head's antipodes sticking up where his head should have been; a
~33~~circumstance