The stranger produced a dust-covered bottle with a yellow seal from the same drawer as before, and placed it before his companion. 'Comes from Pfungst Brothers,' was the only recommendation he ventured; but that was enough. The bottle was fitted with a false neck, to which a siphon, closing hermetically, was attached, so that the champagne could be sipped glass by glass, if desired, without loss of first freshness and that titillating effervescence which makes its charm. O'Hara drank. 'Drink again. 'Twill sweep the cobwebs from your throat.' 'Do you ever feel lonely?' demanded Friezecoat, after a pause. 'Yes, sometimes very much. Like most Irishmen, I am changeful in my moods; to-day I find myself in the height of good spirits, to-morrow in the lowest depths of depression.' 'That is because you are not in your native land--have no home here--no interior. It is not well to be alone.' The pair continued smoking. They smoked as connoisseurs, enjoying each particular puff, following it with dreamy eyes as it ascended, until it lost itself in gradually widening rings of lessening haze, and they embraced the stems of their pipes for a new pull with gloating lips. 'Do you like the furniture of this room?' abruptly inquired the stranger. 'Yes,' replied O'Hara; 'rich, not gaudy, as Shakespeare says.' 'See any want?' 'Not particularly.' 'Ah! there is one piece of furniture particularly wanting,' said the stranger, with the manner of a man who endeavours to master bashfulness by an exaggerated show of good-humoured, rude self-possession. 'What's that?' 'A wife!' O'Hara turned his eyes from the pipe to Friezecoat, and Friezecoat--the gruff, blunt-mannered, muscularly-educated Friezecoat--was positively embarrassed, blushed like a callow boy. 'Were you ever in love?' said Friezecoat, probably with a sly view of diverting the enemy's attention by a movement in flank. The answer was an involuntary sigh. 'Is that it? Do you believe in love at first sight?' 'I believe in anything where love exists; it makes fools of the wisest of us.' 'That's right; and now that the cat's out of the bag I may as well tell you that I have fallen in love at first sight, and that's what I have to say to you.' O'Hara removed his pipe, and gave a long, low, significant whistle, which reached even unto the dog in the yard, and stimulated him into an inquisitive yelp, which might have been heard had it not been stifled in its birth. 'Who has glamoured you--a Frenchwoman?' 'Yes; Chauvin's grand-daughter.' 'The little Song-bird?' 'The same; and I intend to go to-morrow--no, perhaps this very night, to make a formal proposal for her hand to the old soldier.'