introduce his leg and foot into an eel-skin.  Flinging me in a rage to the further corner of the room, he essayed to thrust his foot into my companion, which had been reduced to the same shrunken state as myself.  In vain he tugged, swore, and strained; first with one, and then with another, until the stitches in our sides grinned with perfect torture; the perspiration rolled down his forehead—­his eyes were staring, his teeth set, and every nerve in his body was quivering with his exertions—­but still he could not force us on.

“What’s to be done!” he ejaculated in despairing accents.  A bright thought struck him suddenly, that he might find a pair of boots belonging to some of the other visitors, with which he might make free on so pressing an emergency.  It was but sending them back, with an apology for the mistake, on the following day.  With this idea he sallied from his room, and groped his way down stairs to find the scullery, where he knew the boots were deposited by the servant at night.  This scullery was detached from the main building, and to reach it it was necessary to cross an angle of the yard.  Terence cautiously undid the bolts and fastenings of the back door, and was stealthily picking his steps over the rough stones of the yard, when he was startled by a fierce roar behind him, and at the same moment the teeth of Towser, the great watch-dog, were fastened in his nether garments.  Though very much alarmed, he concealed his feelings, and presuming on a slight previous intimacy with his assailant, he addressed him in a most familiar manner, calling him “poor fellow” and “old Towser,” explained to him the ungentlemanly liberty he was taking with his buckskins, and requested him to let go his hold, as he had quite enough of that sport.  Towser was, however, not to be talked out of his private notions; he foully suspected your uncle of being on no good design, and replied to every remonstrance he made with a growl and a shake, that left no doubt he would resort to more vigorous measures in case of opposition.  Afraid or ashamed to call for help, Terence was kept in this disagreeable state, nearly frozen to death with cold and trembling with terror, until the morning was considerably advanced, when he was discovered by some of the servants, who released him from the guardianship of his surly captor.  Without waiting to account for the extraordinary circumstances in which he had been found, he bolted into the house, rushed up to his bed-chamber, and, locking the door, threw himself into a chair, overwhelmed with shame and vexation.

But poor Terence’s troubles were not half over.  The beautiful heiress, after having discharged several volleys of sand and small pebbles against his window without effect, was returning to her chamber, swelling with indignation, when she was encountered on the stairs by Tibbins, who, no doubt prompted by the demon of jealousy, had been watching her movements.  He could not have chosen a more favourable moment to plead his suit; her mortified vanity, and her anger at what she deemed the culpable indifference of her lover, made her eager to be revenged on him.  It required, therefore, little persuasion to obtain her consent to elope with the haberdasher.  The key of the stable was in her pocket, and in less than ten minutes she was sitting beside him in his gig, taking the shortest road to the priest’s.