Rum disagreed with O’Flaherty confoundedly, but, being sanguine, and also of an obstinate courage not easily to be put down, and liking that fluid, and being young withal, he drank it defiantly and liberally whenever it came in his way.  So this morning he announced to his friend Puddock that he was suffering under a headache ’that ‘id burst a pot.’  The gallant fellow’s stomach, too, was qualmish and disturbed.  He heard of breakfast with loathing.  Puddock rather imperiously insisted on his drinking some tea, which he abhorred, and of which, in very imperfect clothing and with deep groans and occasional imprecations on ’that bastely clar’t’—­to which he chose to ascribe his indisposition—­he drearily partook.

‘I tell you what, Thir,’ said Puddock, finding his patient nothing better, and not relishing the notion of presenting his man in that seedy condition upon the field:  ’I’ve got a remedy, a very thimple one; it used to do wondereth for my poor Uncle Neagle, who loved rum shrub, though it gave him the headache always, and sometimes the gout.’

And Puddock had up Mrs. Hogg, his landlady, and ordered a pair of little muslin bags about the size of a pistol-cartridge each, which she promised to prepare in five minutes, and he himself tumbled over the leaves of his private manuscript quarto, a desultory and miscellaneous album, stuffed with sonnets on Celia’s eye—­a lock of hair, or a pansy here or there pressed between the pages—­birthday verses addressed to Sacharissa, receipts for ‘puptons,’ ‘farces,’ &c.; and several for toilet luxuries, ‘Angelica water,’ ‘The Queen of Hungary’s’ ditto, ‘surfeit waters,’ and finally, that he was in search of, to wit, ’My great Aunt Bell’s recipe for purging the head’ (good against melancholy or the headache).  You are not to suppose that the volume was slovenly or in anywise unworthy of a gentleman and officer of those days.  It was bound in red and gold, had two handsome silver-gilt clasps and red edges, the writing being exquisitely straight and legible, and without a single blot.

‘I have them all except—­two—­three,’ murmured the thoughtful Puddock when he had read over the list of ingredients.  These, however, he got from Toole, close at hand, and with a little silver grater and a pretty little agate pocket pestle and mortar—­an heirloom derived from poor Aunt Bell—­he made a wonderful powder; ’nutmeg and ginger, cinnamon and cloves,’ as the song says, and every other stinging product of nature and chemistry which the author of this famous family ’purge for the head’ could bring to remembrance; and certainly it was potent.  With this the cartridges were loaded, the ends tied up, and O’Flaherty, placed behind a table on which stood a basin, commenced the serious operation, under Puddock’s directions, by introducing a bag at each side of his mouth, which as a man of honour, he was bound to retain there until Puddock had had his morning’s tete-a-tete with the barber.