“'There was, sir,’ sez I.
“'It’s all humbug,’ sez he; 'an’ as for Kathleen,’ sez he, 'she was no betther nor—'
'“Ye’d betther stop, sir,’ sez I, intherruptin’ him; 'for St. Kavin was a holy man, an’ never done nothin’ but what was good an’ saintly.’ Well, sir, he up’s an’ calls the blessed saint a bad name, so I hot him betune th’ eyes an’ rowled him on the grass, an’ I planted his comrade beside him. An’ now I’m the worst in the world below at the hotel for bating two blackguards that done nothin’ but insult me an’ me holy religion; an’ that’s why I can’t go wud yez to-morrow.”
It was far into the “wee sma’ hours” when we parted with Myles O’Byrne and gained sanctuary in the double-bedded room which had been told off to us. The pale and gentle Luna was surrendering her charge to the pink and rosy Aurora, and we sought our couches in beautiful budding daylight.
“Where’s your portmanteau, Dawkins?” asked Tom Whiffler. “I want to get at my things.”
To my utter dismay, the portmanteau was not in the apartment. To ring the bell at this unseemly hour was but to alarm the entire hotel; so, slipping off my shoes, I descended to the hall in the hope of discovering it in a heap of luggage which lay piled in graceful profusion near the entrance. My search was vain, and, with secret forebodings of another mischance in connection with this unhappy valise, I returned to the room and retired to bed.
“I seen it in yer hand, sir,” observed the waiter the next morning whom I interrogated about the missing article—“a thick lump of a solid leather portmantle. I can take the buke on it, if necessary, sir. Here’s the boots; mebbe he can tell us something. Jim, did ye see a thick lump av a solid leather portmantle lyin’ about?”
“I did,” replied the boots, who was a man of much physique and very few words.
“Ye did?”
“Yis.”