e again to be brought into
action. The world and his necessities made him what he was; for many
were the times, for years afterwards, that he would in his reveries
surmise how happy he might have been in his own wild country, where
half-pay would have been competence, had his Judith been spared to him,
and he could have laid his head upon her bosom.

CHAPTER TEN.

IN WHICH MAJOR MCSHANE NARRATES SOME CURIOUS MATRIMONIAL SPECULATIONS.

Our hero was soon fitted out with the livery of a groom, and installed
as the confidential servant of Captain O'Donahue, who had lodgings on
the third floor in a fashionable street. He soon became expert and
useful, and, as the captain breakfasted at home, and always ordered
sufficient for Joey to make another cold meal of during the day, he was
at little or no expense to his master.

One morning, when Captain O'Donahue was sitting in his dressing-gown at
breakfast, Joey opened the door, and announced Major McShane.

"Is it yourself, O'Donahue?" said the major, extending his hand; "and,
now, what d'ye think has brought me here this fine morning? It's to do
a thing that's rather unusual with me,--neither more nor less than to
pay you the 20 pounds which you lent me a matter of three years ago, and
which, I dare say, you never expected to see anything but the ghost of."

"Why, McShane, if the truth must be told, it will be something of a
resurrection when it appears before me," replied O'Donahue; "I
considered it dead and buried; and, like those who are dead and buried,
it has been long forgotten."

"Nevertheless, here it is in four notes--one, two, three, four: four
times five are twenty; there's arithmetic for you, and your money to
boot, and many thanks in the bargain, by way of interest. And now,
O'Donahue, where have you been, what have you been doing, what are you
doing, and what do you intend to do? That's what I call a comprehensive
inquiry, and a very close one too."

"I have been in London a month, I have done nothing, I am doing nothing,
and I don't know what I intend to do. You may take that for a
comprehensive answer."

"I'll tell you all about myself without your asking. I have been in
London for nearly two years, one of which I spent in courting, and the
other in matrimony."

"Why, you don't mean to say that you are married, McShane; if so, as
you've been married a year, you can tell me, am I to give you joy?"

"Why, yes, I believe you may; there's noth