“Upon my soul,” thought I, “I shall not select that morning for my debut in the field.”

“I hope, sir, there’s no river, or watercourse on this road—­any thing else, I can, I hope, control myself against; but water—­running water particularly—­makes me throublesome.”

Well knowing what he meant by the latter phrase, I felt the cold perspiration settling on my forehead, as I remembered that we must be within about ten or twelve miles of Leighlin-bridge, where we should have to pass a very wide river.  I strictly concealed this fact from him, however, and gave him to understand that there was not a well, brook, or rivulet, for forty miles on either side of us.  He now sunk into a kind of moody silence, broken occasionally by a low muttering noise, as if speaking to himself—­what this might portend, I knew not—­but thought it better, under all circumstances, not to disturb him.  How comfortable my present condition was, I need scarcely remark—­sitting vis a vis to a lunatic, with a pair of pistols in his possession—­who had already avowed his consciousness of his tendency to do mischief, and his inability to master it; all this in the dark, and in the narrow limits of a mail-coach, where there was scarcely room for defence, and no possibility of escape—­how heartily I wished myself back in the Coffee-room at Morrisson’s, with my poor friend Tom—­the infernal chaise, that I cursed a hundred times, would have been an “exchange,” better than into the Life Guards—­ay, even the outside of the coach, if I could only reach it, would, under present circumstances, be a glorious alternative to my existing misfortune.  What were rain and storm, thunder and lightning, compared with the chances that awaited me here? —­wet through I should inevitably be, but then I had not yet contracted the horror of moisture my friend opposite laboured under.  “Ha! what is that? is it possible he can be asleep; is it really a snore?—­Heaven grant that little snort be not what the medical people call a premonitory symptom—­if so, he’ll be in upon me now in no time.  Ah, there it is again; he must be asleep surely; now then is my time or never.”  With these words, muttered to myself, and a heart throbbing almost audibly at the risk of his awakening, I slowly let down the window of the coach, and stretching forth my hand, turned the handle cautiously and slowly; I next disengaged my legs, and by a long continuous effort of creeping—­which I had learned perfectly once, when practising to go as a boa constrictor to a fancy ball—­I withdrew myself from the seat and reached the step, when I muttered something very like a thanksgiving to Providence for my rescue.  With little difficulty I now climbed up beside the guard, whose astonishment at my appearance was indeed considerable—­that any man should prefer the out, to the inside of a coach, in such a night, was rather remarkable; but that the person so doing should be totally unprovided with a box-coat,