It was past midnight, if you could believe the watchman; and as I walked slowly westward, and thought on the events of the few last hours, I doubted their actual reality. The strange and quick succession in which they followed, seemed like the wanderings of a dream. A second time had I been delivered from a critical position by a person, two months ago a stranger--and yet one, who appeared to have dropped upon the earth, for the especial purpose of looking after me. I slept--many a vision passed “in shadowy review.”--but one, more brilliant than the rest, was ever before “my mind’s eye.”--Mr. Hartley, the genius of my good fortune, and Isidora, its bright reward. I have said already, that the destinies of my foster-brother and myself were intimately united. Mark Antony left my father’s house to join me in Dublin--the hand of fate had interposed--and on this eventful night, while I reposed at Stevens’s, my _alter ego_ was “taking his rest” in a back attic, two pair up, in a ramification of the Seven Dials--a safe and agreeable domicile, to which his friend, the ratcatcher, had introduced him. A cheaper lodging might have been certainly obtained; but this was quiet and select. From slates to cellar there were but seven families in the house--“and the beauty of it was,” as Shemus Rhua remarked with triumphant satisfaction, “every soul of them was Irish.” CHAPTER XVII. THE ROBBERY OF TIM MALEY. “_My father, the deacon, wrought him his first hose. Odd, I’m thinking deacon Threeplie, the rape-spinner, will twist him his last cravat. Ay, ay, puir Robin is in a fair way o’ being hanged._”--Rob Roy. |After the “sweet sorrow” of parting with the _cantatrice_, the fosterer and his companion, as if striving to leave care behind, pushed forward vigorously on the road; and at sunset, the steeple of the village where they had determined to remain for the night, was visible from the high ground they were crossing. Never were fellow-travellers in more opposite moods; Mark Antony, melancholy as “a lover’s lute”--the ratcatcher, “Brisk as a bee, light as a fairy.” And yet the matter might have been easily accounted for--the one had parted with a mistress--no wonder, therefore, that he, poor fellow, was sad enough; the other was levanting from a wife--consequently he was merry, “and small blame to him,” as they say in Ireland. “Well, upon my conscience, Mark, _astore_,” * said Shemus Rhua, breaking a silence of five minutes, “ye’re a pleasant companion this evening, if a man didn’t care what he said.” * Anglice--darling. The fosterer answered with a sigh.