or other similar protection, argued something so strange, that I doubt not, if he were to decide upon the applicability of the statute of lunacy to a traveller in the mail, the palm would certainly have been awarded to me, and not to my late companion.  Well, on we rolled, and heavily as the rain poured down, so relieved did I feel at my change of position, that I soon fell fast asleep, and never awoke till the coach was driving up Patrick street.  Whatever solace to my feelings reaching the outside of the coach might have been attended with at night, the pleasure I experienced on awaking, was really not unalloyed.  More dead than alive, I sat a mass of wet clothes, like nothing under heaven except it be that morsel of black and spongy wet cotton at the bottom of a schoolboy’s ink bottle, saturated with rain, and the black dye of my coat.  My hat too had contributed its share of colouring matter, and several long black streaks coursed down my “wrinkled front,” giving me very much the air of an Indian warrior, who had got the first priming of his war paint.  I certainly must have been rueful object, were I only to judge from the faces of the waiters as they gazed on me when the coach drew up at Rice and Walsh’s hotel.  Cold, wet, and weary as I was, my curiosity to learn more of my late agreeable companion was strong as ever within me —­perhaps stronger, from the sacrifices his acquaintance had exacted from me.  Before, however, I had disengaged myself from the pile of trunks and carpet bags I had surrounded myself with—­he had got out of the coach, and all I could catch a glimpse of was the back of a little short man in a kind of grey upper coat, and long galligaskins on his legs.  He carried his two bundles under his arm, and stepped nimbly up the steps of the hotel, without turning his head to either side.

“Don’t fancy you shall escape me now, my good friend,” I cried out, as I sprung from the roof to the ground, with one jump, and hurried after the great unknown into the coffee-room.  By the time I reached it he had approached the fire, on the table near which, having deposited the mysterious paper parcels, he was now busily engaged in divesting himself of his great coat; his face was still turned from me, so that I had time to appear employed in divesting myself of my wet drapery before he perceived me; at last the coat was unbuttoned, the gaiters followed, and throwing them carelessly on a chair, he tucked up the skirts of his coat; and spreading himself comfortably a l’Anglais, before the fire, displayed to my wondering and stupified gaze, the pleasant features of Doctor Finucane.

“Why, Doctor—­Doctor Finucane,” cried I, “is this possible? were you really the inside in the mail last night.”

“Devil a doubt of it, Mr. Lorrequer; and may I make bould to ask,—­were you the outside?”

“Then what, may I beg to know, did you mean by your damned story about Barney Doyle, and the hydrophobia, and Cusack Rooney’s thumb—­eh?”