“Oh, blessed hour! Isn’t it beautiful to think of the illuminations and dinners and speeches and shaking of hands, huzzaing, and hip-hipping. May be there won’t be pictures of us in all the shops,--Mister Charles and his man Mister Free. May be they won’t make plays out of us; myself dressed in the gray coat with the red cuffs, the cords, the tops, and the Caroline hat a little cocked, with a phiz in the side of it.” Here he made a sign with his expanded fingers to represent a cockade, which he designated by this word. “I think I see myself dining with the corporation, and the Lord Major of Dublin getting up to propose the health of the hero of El Bodon, Mr. Free; and three times three, hurra! hurra! hurra! Musha, but it’s dry I am gettin’ with the thoughts of the punch and the poteen negus.” “If you go on at this rate, we’re not likely to be soon at our journey’s end. So be alive now; pack up my kit; I shall start by twelve o’clock.” With one spring Mike cleared the stairs, and overthrowing everything and everybody in his way, hurried towards the stable, chanting at the top of his voice the very poetical strain he had indulged me with a few minutes before. My preparations were rapidly made; a few hurried lines of leave-taking to the good fellows I had lived so much with and felt so strongly attached to, with a firm assurance that I should join them again ere long, was all that my time permitted. To Power I wrote more at length, detailing the circumstances which my own letters informed me of, and also those which invited me to return home. This done, I lost not another moment, but set out upon my journey. CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE LEAVE.