voices, and the laughing, so completely addled him, that he was like one
in a very horrid dream. The attention with which I had observed him,
having been remarked by my friend O'Flaherty, he informed me that the
scholar, as he was called there, was then under a kind of cloud--an
adventure which occurred only two nights before, being too fresh in his
memory to permit him enjoying himself even to the limited extent it had
been his wont to do. As illustrative, not only of Mr. Cudmore, but the
life I have been speaking of, I may as well relate it.

Soon after Mr. Cudmore's enlistment under the banners of the
Clanfrizzle, he had sought and found an asylum in the drawing-room of the
establishment, which promised, from its geographical relations, to expose
him less to the molestations of conversation than most other parts of the
room. This was a small recess beside the fire-place, not uncommon in
old-fashioned houses, and which, from its incapacity to hold more than
one, secured to the worthy recluse the privacy he longed for; and here,
among superannuated hearth-brushes, an old hand screen, an asthmatic
bellows, and a kettle-holder, sat the timid youth, "alone, but in a
crowd." Not all the seductions of loo, limited to three pence, nor even
that most appropriately designated game, beggar-my-neighbour--could
withdraw him from his blest retreat. Like his countryman, St. Kevin--my
friend Petrie has ascertained that the saint was a native of Tralee--he
fled from the temptations of the world, and the blandishments of the
fair; but, alas! like the saint himself, the

"poor jib little knew
All that wily sex can do;"

For while he hugged himself in the security of his fortress, the web of
his destiny was weaving. So true is it, as he himself used, no less