No sooner was Sparks despatched on what it was evident he felt to be anything but a pleasant duty, than I turned towards Power, and said, with some tinge of disappointment in the tone, “Well, if you really felt there was anything worth doing there, I flattered myself that--” “Speak out man. That I should have sent you, eh? Is it not so?” “Yes, you’ve hit it.” “Well, Charley, my peace is easily made on this head. Why, I selected Sparks simply to spare you one of the most unpleasant duties that can be imposed upon a man; a duty which, let him discharge it to the uttermost, will never be acknowledged, and the slightest failure in which will be remembered for many a day against him, besides the pleasant and very probable prospect of being selected as a bull’s eye for a French rifle, or carried off a prisoner; eh, Charley? There’s no glory in that, devil a ray of it! Come, come, old fellow, Fred Power’s not the man to keep his friend out of the _mêlée_, if only anything can be made by being in it. Poor Sparks, I’d swear, is as little satisfied with the arrangement as yourself, if one knew but all.” “I say, Power,” said a tall, dashing-looking man of about five-and-forty, with a Portuguese order on his breast,--“I say, Power, dine with us at the halt.” “With pleasure, if I may bring my young friend here.” “Of course; pray introduce us.” “Major Hixley, Mr. O’Malley,--a 14th man, Hixley.” “Delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr. O’Malley. Knew a famous fellow in Ireland of your name, a certain Godfrey O’Malley, member for some county or other.” “My uncle,” said I, blushing deeply, with a pleasurable feeling at even this slight praise of my oldest friend. “Your uncle! give me your hand. By Jove, his nephew has a right to good treatment at my hands; he saved my life in the year ‘98. And how is old Godfrey?” “Quite well, when I left him some months ago; a little gout, now and then.” “To be sure he has, no man deserves it better; but it’s a gentlemanlike gout that merely jogs his memory in the morning of the good wine he has drank over night. By-the-bye, what became of a friend of his, a devilish eccentric fellow who held a command in the Austrian service?” “Oh, Considine, the count?” “The same.” “As eccentric as ever; I left him on a visit with my uncle. And Boyle,--did you know Sir Harry Boyle?” “To be sure I did; shall I ever forget him, and his capital blunders, that kept me laughing the whole time I spent in Ireland? I was in the house when he concluded a panegyric upon a friend, by calling him, ‘the father to the poor, and uncle to Lord Donoughmore.’” “He was the only man who could render by a bull what it was impossible to convey more correctly,” said Power. “You’ve heard of his duel with Dick Toler?” “Never; let’s hear it.”