gold. Upon one point both agreed, that being unfitted by the peculiar
bias of his genius for work, he was to acquire the immense fortune to
which his merits entitled him by means of a pure run of good luck. This
solution of Peter's future had the double effect of reconciling both
himself and his grandmother to his idle courses, and also of maintaining
that even flow of hilarious spirits which made him everywhere welcome,
and which was in truth the natural result of his consciousness of
approaching affluence.

It happened one night that Peter had enjoyed himself to a very late hour
with two or three choice spirits near Palmerstown. They had talked
politics and love, sung songs, and told stories, and, above all, had
swallowed, in the chastened disguise of punch, at least a pint of good
whiskey, every man.

It was considerably past one o'clock when Peter bid his companions
goodbye, with a sigh and a hiccough, and lighting his pipe set forth on
his solitary homeward way.

The bridge of Chapelizod was pretty nearly the midway point of his night
march, and from one cause or another his progress was rather slow, and it
was past two o'clock by the time he found himself leaning over its old
battlements, and looking up the river, over whose winding current and
wooded banks the soft moonlight was falling.

The cold breeze that blew lightly down the stream was grateful to him. It
cooled his throbbing head, and he drank it in at his hot lips. The scene,
too, had, without his being well sensible of it, a secret fascination.
The village was sunk in the profoundest slumber, not a mortal stirring,
not a sound afloat, a soft haze covered it all, and the fairy moonlight