But our strongest resolutions are overthrown by circumstances--the ducking, the dancing, and the _potteen_, had so exhausted Terence, that he unconsciously shut, first, one eye, then the other, and, finally, he fell fast asleep, and dreamed of running away with the heiress on his back, through a shaking bog, in which he sank up to the middle at every step. His vision was, however, suddenly dispelled by a smart rattle against his window. A moment was sufficient to recall him to his senses--he knew it was Miss Biddy's signal, and, jumping from the bed, drew back the cotton window-curtains and peered earnestly out: but though the day had begun to break, it was still too dark to enable him to distinguish any person on the lawn. In a violent hurry he seized on your humble servant, and endeavoured to draw me on; but, alas! the heat of the fire had so shrank me from my natural dimensions, that he might as well have attempted to introduce his leg and foot into an eel-skin. Flinging me in a rage to the further corner of the room, he essayed to thrust his foot into my companion, which had been reduced to the same shrunken state as myself. In vain he tugged, swore, and strained; first with one, and then with another, until the stitches in our sides grinned with perfect torture; the perspiration rolled down his forehead--his eyes were staring, his teeth set, and every nerve in his body was quivering with his exertions--but still he could not force us on. "What's to be done!" he ejaculated in despairing accents. A bright thought struck him suddenly, that he might find a pair of boots belonging to some of the other visitors, with which he might make free on so pressing an emergency. It was but sending them back, with an apology for the mistake, on the following day. With this idea he sallied from his room, and groped his way down stairs to find the scullery, where he knew the boots were deposited by the servant at night. This scullery was detached from the main building, and to reach it it was necessary to cross an angle of the yard. Terence cautiously undid the bolts and fastenings of the back door, and was stealthily picking his steps over the rough stones of the yard, when he was startled by a fierce roar behind him, and at the same moment the teeth of Towser, the great watch-dog, were fastened in his nether garments. Though very much alarmed, he concealed his feelings, and presuming on a slight previous intimacy with his assailant, he addressed him in a most familiar manner, calling him "poor fellow" and "old Towser," explained to him the ungentlemanly liberty he was taking with his buckskins, and requested him to let go his hold, as he had quite enough of that sport. Towser was, however, not to be talked out of his private notions; he foully suspected your uncle of being on no good design, and replied to every remonstrance he made with a growl and a shake, that left no doubt he would resort to more vigorous measures in case of opposition.