her home, sir, for Jack Costigan, though
poor, is a gentleman; and when I reintered the house to pay me respects
to me joyous young friend, Mr. Foker--ye were gone. We had a jolly night
of ut, sir--Mr. Foker, the three gallant young dragoons, and your 'umble
servant. Gad, sir, it put me in mind of one of our old nights when I
bore His Majesty's commission in the Foighting Hundtherd and Third." And
he pulled out an old snuff box, which he presented with a stately air to
his new acquaintance.

Arthur was a great deal too much flurried to speak. This shabby-looking
buck was--was her father. The Captain was perfumed with the
recollections of the last night's cigars, and pulled and twisted the
tuft on his chin as jauntily as any young dandy.

"I hope, Miss F--, Miss Costigan is well, sir," Pen said, flushing up.
"She--she gave me greater pleasure, than--than I--I--I ever enjoyed at
a play. I think, sir--I think she's the finest actress in the world," he
gasped out.

"Your hand, young man! for ye speak from your heart," cried the Captain.
"Thank ye, sir, an old soldier and a fond father thanks ye. She is
the finest actress in the world. I've seen the Siddons, sir, and
the O'Nale--they were great, but what were they compared to Miss
Fotheringay? I do not wish she should ashume her own name while on
the stage. Me family, sir, are proud people; and the Costigans of
Costiganstown think that an honest man, who has borne Her Majesty's
colours in the Hundred and Third, would demean himself, by permitting
his daughter to earn her old father's bread."

"There cannot be a more honourable duty, surely," Pen said.

"Honourable! Bedad, sir, I'd like to see the man who said Jack Costigan
would consent to anything dishonourable. I have a heart, sir, though
I am poor; I like a man who has a heart. You have: I read it in your
honest face and steady eye. And would you believe it"? he added, after a
pause, and with a pathetic whisper, "that that Bingley who has made his
fortune by me child, gives her but two guineas a week: out of which she
finds herself in dresses, and which, added to me own small means, makes
our all?"

Now the Captain's means were so small as to be, it may be said, quite
invisible. But nobody knows how the wind is tempered to shorn Irish
lambs, and in what marvellous places they find pasture. If Captain
Costigan, whom I had the honour to know, would but have told his
history, it would have been a great moral story. Bu