The door at length opened, and the doctor followed Hans into a dimly lighted room, where Dalton lay, half dressed, upon his bed. Before Grounsell had well passed the entrance, the sick man said, “I am afraid, sir, that my little friend here has taken a bit of liberty with both of us, since I believe you wanted a patient just as little as I did a doctor.” The anxious, lustrous eye, the flushed cheek, and tremulous lip of the speaker gave, at the same time, a striking contradiction to his words. Grounsell's practised glance read these signs rapidly, and drawing near the bed, he seated himself beside it, saying, “It is quite clear, sir, that you are not well, and although, if we were both of us in our own country, this visit of mine would, as you observe, be a considerable liberty, seeing that we are in a foreign land, I hope you will not deem my intrusion of this nature, but suffer me, if I can, to be of some service to you.” Less the words themselves than a certain purpose-like kindliness in the speaker's manner, induced Dalton to accept the offer, and reply to the questions which the other proposed to him. “No, no, doctor,” said he, after a few moments; “there is no great mischief brewing after all. The truth is, I was fretted harassed a little. It was about a boy of mine I have only one and he 's gone away to be a soldier with the Austrians. You know, of course as who does n't? how hard it is to do anything for a young man now-a-days. If family or high connection could do it, we 'd be as well off as our neighbors. We belong to the Daltons of Garrigmore, that you know are full blood with the O'Neals of Cappagh. But what 's the use of blood now? devil a good it does a man. It would be better to have your father a cotton-spinner, or an iron-master, than the descendant of Shane Mohr na Manna.” “I believe you are right,” observed the doctor, dryly. “I know I am; I feel it myself, and I 'm almost ashamed to tell it. Here am I, Peter Dalton, the last of them now; and may I never leave this bed, if I could make a barony constable in the county where the king's writ could n't run once without our leave.” “But Ireland herself has changed more than your own fortunes,” remarked Grounsell. “That's true, that 's true,” sighed the sick man. “I don't remember the best days of it, but I 've heard of them often and often from my father. The fine old times, when Mount Dalton was filled with company from the ground to the slates, and two lords in the granary; a pipe of port wine in the hall, with a silver cup beside it; the Modereen hounds, huntsmen and all, living at rack and manger, as many as fifty sitting down in the parlor, and I won't say how many in the servants' hall; the finest hunters in the west country in the stables, there was life for you! Show me the equal of that in the wide world.” “And what is the present condition of the scene of those festivities?” said Grounsell, with a calm but searching look.