"Come then, Doctor, Harry has no objection you see; so out with it, and
we are all prepared to sympathise with your woes and misfortunes,
whatever they be."

"Well, I am sure, I never could think of mentioning it without his leave;
but now that he sees no objection--Eh, do you though? if so, then, don't
be winking and making faces at me; but say the word, and devil a syllable
of it I'll tell to man or mortal."

The latter part of this delectable speech was addressed to me across the
table, in a species of stage whisper, in reply to some telegraphic
signals I had been throwing him, to induce him to turn the conversation
into any other channel.

"Then, that's enough," continued he sotto voce--"I see you'd rather I'd
not tell it."

"Tell it and be d____d," said I, wearied by the incorrigible pertinacity
with which the villain assailed me. My most unexpected energy threw the
whole table into a roar, at the conclusion of which Fin began his
narrative of the mail-coach adventure.

I need not tell my reader, who has followed me throughout in these my
Confessions, that such a story lost nothing of its absurdity, when
entrusted to the Doctor's powers of narration; he dwelt with a poet's
feeling upon the description of his own sufferings, and my sincere
condolence and commiseration; he touched with the utmost delicacy upon
the distant hints by which he broke the news to me; but when he came to
describe my open and undisguised terror, and my secret and precipitate