About the middle of this week, there arrived two of our former friends, Frank Maberly and Captain Desborough, riding side by side. The Elders, with the Doctor, were outside, and detained the Dean, talking to him and bidding him welcome. But Captain Desborough, passing in, came into the room where were assembled Alice, Sam, and Jim, who gave him a most vociferous greeting.
They saw in a moment that there was some fun in the wind. They knew, by experience, that when Desborough's eyes twinkled like that, some absurdity was preparing, though they were quite unprepared for the mixture of reality and nonsense which followed.
"Pace!" said Desborough, in his affected Irish accent; "be on this house, and all in it. The top of the morning to ye all."
"Now," said Alice, "we are going to have some fun; Captain Desborough has got his brogue on."
"Ye'll have some fun directly, Miss Brentwood," he said. "But there's some serious, sober earnest to come first. My cousin, Slievedonad, is dead."
"Lord Slievedonad?"
"The same. That small Viscount is at this moment in pur——. God forgive me, and him too."
"Poor fellow!"
"That's just half. My uncle Lord Covetown was taken with a fit when he heard of it, and is gone after him, and the Lord forgive him too. He turned me, his own brother's son, out into the world with half an education, to sink or swim; and never a kind word did he or his son ever give me in their lives. It must have broken the old man's heart to think how the estate would go. But as I said before, God forgive him."