Alister and I were the last to part, and as we did so, having been talking about Dennis O’Moore, I said, “I knew it was French when I got nearer, but I never learnt French, though my mother began to teach me once.  You don’t really think you’ll learn it from him, do you?”

“With perseverance,” replied Alister, simply.

“What good will French be to you?” I asked.

“Knowledge is a light burden, and it may carry ye yet,” was Alister’s reply.

When we met again, Dennis was jingling some money in his pocket, which was added to the common fund of which the miser’s legacy had formed the base.  I had got paper and stamps, and information as to mails, and some more information which was postponed till we found out what was amiss with the Scotch leaf of our shamrock.  For there were deep furrows on Alister’s brow, but far deeper was the despondency of his soul.  He was in the lowest possible spirits, and with a Scotchman that is low indeed.  He had made out his way to his cousin’s place of business, and had heard a very satisfactory report of the commercial success, but—­the cousin had gone “to the States.”

Alister felt himself very much ill-used by fate, and I believe Dennis felt himself very much ill-used by Alister, that evening, but I maintain that I alone was the person really to be pitied, because I had to keep matters smooth between the two.  The gloom into which Alister relapsed, his prophecies, prognostications, warnings, raven-like croakings, parallel instances, general reflections and personal applications, as well as his obstinate notion that he would be “a burden and a curse” to “the two of us,” and that it would have been small wonder had the sailors cast him forth into the Atlantic, like the Prophet Jonah, as being certain to draw ill-luck on his companions, were trying enough; but it was no joke that misfortune had precisely the opposite effect upon Dennis.  If there was a bit of chaff left unchaffed in all Ireland, from Malin Head to Barley Cove, I believe it came into Dennis’s head on this inappropriate occasion, and he forthwith discharged it at Alister’s.  To put some natures into a desperate situation seems like putting tartaric acid into soda and water—­they sparkle up and froth.  It certainly was so with Dennis O’Moore; and if Alister could hardly have been more raven-like upon the crack of doom, the levity of Dennis would, in our present circumstances, have been discreditable to a paroquet.

For it was no light matter to have lost our one hope of a friend in this strange land; and yet this was practically what it meant, when we knew that Alister Auchterlay’s cousin had gone to the States.  But the idea of kinship at last suggested something more sensible than jokes to Dennis O’Moore.

“Why, I’ve a cousin of my own in Demerara, and I’d forgotten him entirely!” he suddenly announced.