the mail, the palm would certainly have been awarded to me, and not to
my late companion. Well, on we rolled, and heavily as the rain poured
down, so relieved did I feel at my change of position, that I soon fell
fast asleep, and never awoke till the coach was driving up Patrick
street. Whatever solace to my feelings reaching the outside of the coach
might have been attended with at night, the pleasure I experienced on
awaking, was really not unalloyed. More dead than alive, I sat a mass
of wet clothes, like nothing under heaven except it be that morsel of
black and spongy wet cotton at the bottom of a schoolboy's ink bottle,
saturated with rain, and the black dye of my coat. My hat too had
contributed its share of colouring matter, and several long black
streaks coursed down my "wrinkled front," giving me very much the air of
an Indian warrior, who had got the first priming of his war paint. I
certainly must have been rueful object, were I only to judge from the
faces of the waiters as they gazed on me when the coach drew up at Rice
and Walsh's hotel. Cold, wet, and weary as I was, my curiosity to learn
more of my late agreeable companion was strong as ever within me
--perhaps stronger, from the sacrifices his acquaintance had exacted
from me. Before, however, I had disengaged myself from the pile of
trunks and carpet bags I had surrounded myself with--he had got out of
the coach, and all I could catch a glimpse of was the back of a little
short man in a kind of grey upper coat, and long galligaskins on his
legs. He carried his two bundles under his arm, and stepped nimbly up
the steps of the hotel, without turning his head to either side.

"Don't fancy you shall escape me now, my good friend," I cried out, as I
sprung from the roof to the ground, with one jump, and hurried after the
great unknown into the coffee-room. By the time I reached it he had
approached the fire, on the table near which, having deposited the
mysterious paper parcels, he was now busily engaged in divesting himself