“Ah,” said he, with a sigh, “I’ve been longing to see the fox-hounds throw off near Kilkenny; these three weeks I’ve been thinking of nothing else; but I’m not sure how my nerves will stand the cry; I might be troublesome.”
“Well,” thought I, “I shall not select that morning for my début in the field.”
“I hope, sir, there’s no river or watercourse in this road; anything else I can, I hope, control myself against; but water—running water particularly—makes me troublesome.”
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 a bridge, where we should have to pass a very wide river. I strictly concealed this fact from him, however. He now sank into a kind of moody silence, broken occasionally by a low, muttering noise, as if speaking to himself.
How comfortable my present condition was I need scarcely remark, sitting vis-à-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. If I could only reach the outside of the coach I would be happy. What were rain and storm, thunder and lightning compared with the chance 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? Ah, there it is again;—he must be asleep, surely;—now, then, is my time, or never. 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, I withdrew myself from the seat, reached the step, when I muttered something very like thanksgiving to Providence for my rescue. With little difficulty I now climbed up beside the guard, whose astonishment at my appearance was indeed considerable.
Well, on we rolled, and very soon, more dead than alive, I sat a mass of wet clothes, like a 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 a 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. I could catch a glimpse of his back, and hurried after the great unknown into the coffee room. By the time I entered, he was spreading himself comfortably, à l’Anglais, before the fire, and displayed to my wandering and stupefied gaze the pleasant features of Dr. Finucane.
“Why, Doctor—Doctor Finucane,” cried I, “is it possible? Were you, then, really the inside in the mail last night?”
“Not a doubt of it, Mr. Lorrequer; and may I make bould to ask were you the outside?”