I had a curious premonitory dream in the last week I spent at the College. I thought I knew fairly well the usual questions on Bridging, and had given but little time to it. I dreamt the night before I was to be examined I could not describe General Eblé’s bridges made over the Beresina for Napoleon’s retreat, and getting up studied it carefully, from 1 to 3 a.m. It was the first question in our paper set at 10 a.m.! The Professors were mistaken, and having done better than anyone anticipated in the Final Examination, I went over to Dublin at the end of the year, and joined General William Napier. The night after I arrived in Dublin I dined at the Mansion House, when discussion was carried on across the table with a gentleman sitting next to me about the Clones agency. It was impossible for me to avoid hearing the conversation, and as a result of what I learnt that evening I supervised for twenty-one years the management of my brother-in-law’s estate, about 9000 Irish acres. Six months later, Sir Thomas Lennard, who had married my second sister, went down with me to Clones, the third time it had been visited by the owner for upwards of eighty years, he having succeeded his grandfather, who lived to be nearly a hundred years old. CHAPTER XIX 1865–7--“ON THE STAFF” Recognition of an opponent--A good Veterinary Surgeon--“Vagabond”-- Fenian scares--I supervise the management of an Irish estate-- Difficulties of marriage settlements--Sir Thomas Lennard-- His offer of £5000. On the 22nd May, when accompanying General Napier, who was inspecting a battalion at Mullingar, my eye rested on an officer whose face I recognised, and when the parade was over I asked him, “Are you the man who fought me in the public-house in Air Street, Regent Street, and gave me such a hammering?” He replied, “I am the man; but I do not admit that I gave you a hammering, for you left me speechless.” In taking lessons from various pugilists in London, I had gone in 1862 to an ex-“Lightweight Champion,” and after a few lessons I was foolish enough to accept his proposition that instead of paying 7s. 6d. for each lesson, I should pay him £5, and then have as many lessons as I desired. The result was that after I had had two or three lessons, instead of taking the trouble to stand up himself, he invariably set me to box with the first pupil who happened to come in, and thus it was I met the gentleman, not knowing he was in the Army. Though neither of us lost our tempers, we had what was virtually, and is now called, a glove fight, except that our gloves were heavier and better covered.