, his strange and guttural utterances.

"I will go before. Stay here," said Hans, as they gained the
landing-place; and so saying, he pushed open the door and disappeared.

As Grounsell stood alone and in the dark, he wondered within himself
what strange chances should have brought a fellow-countryman into this
companionship, for there was something so grotesque in Hans's appearance
and manner, that it routed all notion of his being admitted to any
footing of friendly equality.

The door at length opened, and the doctor followed Hans into a dimly
lighted room, where Dalton lay, half dressed, upon his bed. Before
Grounsell had well passed the entrance, the sick man said, "I am afraid,
sir, that my little friend here has taken a bit of liberty with both
of us, since I believe you wanted a patient just as little as I did a
doctor."

The anxious, lustrous eye, the flushed cheek, and tremulous lip of the
speaker gave, at the same time, a striking contradiction to his words.
Grounsell's practised glance read these signs rapidly, and drawing near
the bed, he seated himself beside it, saying, "It is quite clear, sir,
that you are not well, and although, if we were both of us in our own
country, this visit of mine would, as you observe, be a considerable
liberty, seeing that we are in a foreign land, I hope you will not deem
my intrusion of this nature, but suffer me, if I can, to be of some
service to you."

Less the words themselves than a certain purpose-like kindliness in the
speaker's manner, induced Dalton to accept the offer, and reply to the
questions which the other proposed to him. "No, no, doctor," said he,
after a few moments; "there is no great mischief brewing after all. The
truth is, I was fretted harassed a little. It was about a boy of mine
I have only one and he 's gone away to be a soldier with the Austrians.
You know, of course as who does n't? how hard it is to do anything for a
young man now-a-days. If family or high connection could do it, we 'd
be as well off as our neighbors. We belong to the Daltons of Garrigmore,
that you know are full blood with the O'Neals of Cappagh. But what 's
the use of blood now? devil a good it does a man. It would be better
to have your father a cotton-spinner, or an iron-master, than the
descendant of Shane Mohr na Manna."

"I believe you are right," observed the doctor, dryly.

"I know I am; I feel it myself, and I 'm almost ashamed to tell it. Here
am I, Peter Dalto