what, after all, did I care for him, and his queer old toggery and
strange looks? Not a fig! I was nothing the worse for having seen him,
and a good story the better. So I tumbled into bed, put out my candle,
and, cheered by a loud drunken quarrel in the back lane, went fast
asleep.

"From this deep slumber I awoke with a start. I knew I had had a
horrible dream; but what it was I could not remember. My heart was
thumping furiously; I felt bewildered and feverish; I sate up in the bed
and looked about the room. A broad flood of moonlight came in through
the curtainless window; everything was as I had last seen it; and though
the domestic squabble in the back lane was, unhappily for me, allayed, I
yet could hear a pleasant fellow singing, on his way home, the then
popular comic ditty called, 'Murphy Delany.' Taking advantage of this
diversion I lay down again, with my face towards the fireplace, and
closing my eyes, did my best to think of nothing else but the song,
which was every moment growing fainter in the distance:----

"'Twas Murphy Delany, so funny and frisky,
Stept into a shebeen shop to get his skin full;
He reeled out again pretty well lined with whiskey,
As fresh as a shamrock, as blind as a bull.

"The singer, whose condition I dare say resembled that of his hero, was
soon too far off to regale my ears any more; and as his music died away,
I myself sank into a doze, neither sound nor refreshing. Somehow the
song had got into my head, and I went meandering on through the
adventures of my respectable fellow-countryman, who, on emerging from
the 'shebeen shop,' fell into a river, from which he was fished up to be
'sat upon' by a coroner's jury, who having learned from a 'horse-doctor'