"Well," said the stranger, "I had a motive not personal to myself, in accosting you, or I should not have taken the liberty. I am Mr. Henry Fitzmaurice, one of the London correspondents of the Dublin Evening Mail. I believe that I am not mistaken in supposing that I am speaking to an American?"
"Not at all mistaken!" answered the American, pleased with a frankness so much more like that of his native land than he had been in the habit of meeting during his short sojourn abroad. "I am called Mr. Brand—Carlton Brand, and on ordinary occasions I am a lawyer of the city of Philadelphia."
"That little matter over, which I should not have been able to manage under half an hour had I been a pure John Bull instead of two-thirds Irishman," said the man who had introduced himself as Fitzmaurice, in a vivacious manner very well calculated to put the other at his ease—"now, not being either of us members of the Circumlocution Office, we will get at the gist of the matter at once. I am going over to Ireland to-night, or at least I am going to make a start in that direction, and I believe that I can manage to secure you a passage if you will accept one."
"Certainly, and with many thanks, but how?" was the reply.
"Well, I am not so sure about the thanks," said Fitzmaurice, in the same pleasant tone which had before won his companion. "It is going to be a wild night on the Channel, if I am any judge of weather, and I have crossed it often enough to begin to have some idea. But I must cross, and so must you, if you can, as I understand you to say."
"I must, certainly, if any thing in the shape of a vessel does so," said the American. "But you have not yet told me—"
"No, of course not!" the newspaper man ran on. "Always expect an Irishman to begin his story in the middle and tell it out at each end, and you will not be far from the fact. Well, there are some despatches for the Lord Lieutenant that need to be across before noon to-morrow, as the Secretary for Ireland has an insane fancy, and a special train left London to make the connection with the steamer that has just gone. I came in it, and with the Queen's messenger,—with some matters that must reach the Mail in advance of the other Dublin papers. They have a little despatch-steamer lying just below, and the messenger telegraphed to fire her up, from one of the back stations, when he found the chances against him. In an hour she will have a full head of steam, and before it is quite dark we shall be clear of the coast. I have no doubt that I can procure you a passage, and if you will step round with me to the wharf where she lies, I will certainly try the experiment. Now you have it."
"And a very kind and generous thing I have at the same time!" exclaimed the American, warmly.
"As I said before, I do not know about the generosity!" replied the correspondent, as they took their way around the warehouses that headed the packet-wharf, towards the pier below, where the despatch-boat lay. "The fact is that the Emerald is not much bigger than a yawl, and though she is a splendid little sea-boat and never has found any gale in which she could not outlive the biggest of the merchant steamers, she is very much of a cockle-shell in the way of jumping about; and people who have any propensity for sea-sickness, a thing a good deal worse than any ordinary kind of death, are very likely to have a little turn at it under such circumstances."
"I have never been very much at sea, but I believe that I am beyond the vulgarity of sea-sickness!" was the answer; and just then they reached the despatch-steamer.