ause into their Bill? Could n't they wait to smuggle it in on a
committee? Here I am clean ruined and undone, just as I was on the road
to fame and fortune. And I can't even help a friend!" said he, turning
a pitiful look at Heathcote.

"Don't waste a thought about me!" said Heathcote, good-humoredly.

"But I will!" cried O'Shea. "I 'll go down to the Horse Guards myself.
Sure I'm forgetting already," added he, with a sigh, "that we 're all
'out;' and now, for a trifle of five hundred, there's a fine chance
lost as ever man had. You don't know anybody could accommodate one with
a loan,--of course, on suitable terms?"

"Not one,--not one!"

"Or who 'd do it on a bill at three months, with our own names?"

"None!"

"Is n't it hard, I ask,--isn't it cruel,--Just as I was making a figure
in the House? I was the 'rising man of the party,'--so the 'Post' called
me,--and the 'Freeman' said, 'O'Shea has only to be prudent, and his
success is assured.' And wasn't I prudent? Didn't I keep out of the
divisions for half the session? Who's your father's banker, Heathcote?"

"Drummonds, I believe; but I don't know them."

"Murther! but it is hard! five hundred,--only five hundred. A real
true-hearted patriot, fresh for his work, and without engagements, going
for five hundred! I see you feel for me, my dear fellow," cried he,
grasping Heathcote's hand. "I hear what your heart is saying this
minute: 4 O'Shea, old boy, if I had the money, I 'd put it in the palm
of your hand without the scratch of a pen between us.'"

"I 'm not quite so certain I should," muttered the other, half sulkily.

"But I know you better than you know yourself, and I repeat it. You 'd
say, 'Gorman O'Shea, I 'm not the man to see a first-rate fellow lost
for a beggarly five hundred. I 'd rather be able to say one of these
days, "Look at that man on the Woolsack,--or, maybe, Chief Justice in
the Queen's Bench--well, would you believe it? if I hadn't helped him
one morning with a few hundreds, it's maybe in the Serpentine he 'd have
been, instead of up there."' And as we 'd sit over a bottle of hock in
the bay-window at Richmond, you 'd say, 'Does your Lordship remember the
night when you heard the House was up, and you had n't as much as would
pay your fare over to Ireland?'"

"I'm not so certain of _that_, either," was the dry response of
Heathcote.

"And of what _are_ you certain, then?" cried O'Shea, angrily; "for I
begin to believe you trust not