“Club, sir, club! it was a lunatic asylum. The general was no other than the famous Dr. Andrew Moorville, that had the great madhouse at Bangor, and who was in the habit of giving his patients every now and then a kind of country party; it being one remarkable feature of their malady that when one takes to his peculiar flight, whatever it be, the others immediately take the hint and go off at score. Hence my agreeable adventure: the Bengal tiger being a Liverpool merchant, and the most vivacious madman in England; while the hour-glass and the Moulah were both on an experimental tour to see whether they should not be pronounced totally incurable for life.” “And Isabella?” inquired Power. “Ah, poor Isabella had been driven mad by a card-playing aunt at Bath, and was in fact the most hopeless case there. The last words I heard her speak confirmed my mournful impression of her case,-- “‘Yes,’ said she, as they removed her to her carriage, ‘I must, indeed, have but a weak intellect, when I could have taken the nephew of a Manchester cotton-spinner, with a face like a printed calico, for a trump card, and the best in the pack!’” Poor Sparks uttered these last words with a faltering accent, and finishing his glass at one draught withdrew without wishing us good-night. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE SKIPPER. In such like gossipings passed our days away, for our voyage itself had nothing of adventure or incident to break its dull monotony; save some few hours of calm, we had been steadily following our seaward track with a fair breeze, and the long pennant pointed ever to the land where our ardent expectations were hurrying before it. The latest accounts which had reached us from the Peninsula told that our regiment was almost daily engaged; and we burned with impatience to share with the others the glory they were reaping. Power, who had seen service, felt less on this score than we who had not “fleshed our maiden swords;” but even he sometimes gave way, and when the wind fell toward sunset, he would break out into some exclamation of discontent, half fearing we should be too late. “For,” said he, “if we go on in this way the regiment will be relieved and ordered home before we reach it.” “Never fear, my boys, you’ll have enough of it. Both sides like the work too well to give in; they’ve got a capital ground and plenty of spare time,” said the major. “Only to think,” cried Power, “that we should be lounging away our idle hours when these gallant fellows are in the saddle late and early. It is too bad; eh, O’Malley? You’ll not be pleased to go back with the polish on your sabre? What will Lucy Dashwood say?” This was the first allusion Power had ever made to her, and I became red to the very forehead. “By-the-bye,” added he, “I have a letter for Hammersley, which should rather have been entrusted to your keeping.” At these words I felt cold as death, while he continued:--