swept out that morning by the joint efforts of a brakesman and the newsagent, so that it was less hideously repulsive than at a later stage in the day, when tobacco juice, orange peel, and scraps of newspapers made it unfit for a decent pig.  The lawyer took out his plug, more easily carried than cut tobacco, and whittled it down with his knife to fill his handsome Turk’s head meerschaum.  When all was ready, he discovered, to his infinite disgust, that he had no matches nor pipe-lights of any description.  The news agent, Frank, a well-known character on the road, supplied him with a box of Eddy’s manufacture, for which he declined to receive payment.  However, he pressed his wares upon the grateful Coristine, recommending warmly the Samantha books and Frank Stockton’s stories.  “Are there any women in them?” asked the smoker.  “Full of them,” replied Frank; “Why, Samantha is a woman.”  “Take them away, and bring me something different.”  The news agent returned with a volume made up of cartoons and other illustrations from Puck, and soon the Irishman was shaking his sides over the adventures of Brudder Sunrise Waterbury and similar fictitious characters.  So absorbed was he in this trivial literature that he failed to notice the entrance of an old man, respectably dressed who took a seat on the opposite side of the aisle, and was preparing to smoke his three inches of clay.  He was aroused by the salutation and request:—­

“Good marnin’, Sor, an’ moight Oi be afther thrubblin’ yeez for a loight to my poipe?”

“Certainly, with pleasure; glad to be of any use to a fellow countryman,” replied Coristine, looking up, and perceiving that his new acquaintance, though old and stooped, had a soldierly air.  “You have been in service?” he continued.

“Troth I have, puff, puff, now she’s goin’ aisy.  Oi was in the Furren Laygion in South Ameriky, an’ my cornel was the foinest man you iver see.  It was Frinch he was by his anshesters, an’ his name it was Jewplesshy.  Wan toime we was foightin’ wid the Spanyerds an’ the poor deluded haythen Injuns, when a shpint bullet rickyshayed an’ jumped into my mouth, knockin’ out the toot’ ye’ll percaive is missin’ here.  Will, now, the cornel he was lookin’ at me, an’, fwhen Oi shput out the bullet and the broken toot’ on the ground, he roides up to me, and says, says he, ‘It’s a brave bhoy, yeez are, Moikle Terry, an’ here’s a’ suverin to get a new toot’ put in whin the war is over, says he.  Oh, that suverin wint to kape company wid a lot more that Oi’d be proud to see the face av in my owld age.  But, sorra a toot’ did the dintist put in for me, for fwhere wud the nate hole for the poipe have been thin, till me that, now?”

Mr. Coristine failed to answer this conundrum, but continued the conversation with the old soldier.  He learnt that Michael had accompanied his colonel to Canada, and, after serving him faithfully for many years, had wept over his grave.  One of the old man’s sons was a sergeant in the Royal Artillery, and his daughter was married to a Scotch farmer named Carruthers, up in the County of Grey.