"What?" said Tom.
"Why, him that was with you just now is the Earl of Ormond."
My story is over—
"And James Fitzjames was Scotland's king."
All the potations pottle-deep, the road-side drinking, the champagne, the cognac, the punch of the Feathers, vanished at once from Tom's brain, to make room for the recollection of what he had been saying for the last three hours. Waiting for no further explanation, he threw up the window, (they were sitting on a ground-floor,) and, leaving Mr. Mulvany to finish the bowl as he pleased, proceeded at a hand-canter to Clonmell, not freed from the apparition of Lord Ormond before he had left Kilcash to his north; and nothing could ever again induce him to wander in the direction of Kilkenny, there to run the risk of meeting with his fellow-butler, until his lordship was so safely bestowed in the family vault as to render the chance of collision highly improbable. Such is my Il Bondocani.
T. C. D.
The Little Bit of Tape