'Absalom was caught by the hair of his head--he was, Puddock--long hair or short hair, or (a hiccough) no hair at all, isn't it nature's doing, I ask you my darlin' Puddock, _isn't_ it?' He was shedding tears again very fast. 'There was Cicero and Julius Caesar, wor both as bald as that,' and he thrust a shining sugar basin, bottom upward, into Puddock's face. '_I'm_ not bald; I tell you I'm _not_--no, my darlin' Puddock, I'm not--poor Hyacinth O'Flaherty is _not bald_,' shaking Puddock by both hands. 'That's very plain, Sir, but I don't see your drift,' he replied. 'I want to tell you, Puddock, dear, if you'll only have a minute's patience. The door can't fasten, divil bother it; come into the next room;' and toppling a little in his walk, he led him solemnly into his bed-room--the door of which he locked--somewhat to Puddock's disquietude, who began to think him insane. Here having informed Puddock that Nutter was driving at the one point the whole evening, as any one that knew the secret would have seen; and having solemnly imposed the seal of secrecy upon his second, and essayed a wild and broken discourse upon the difference between total baldness and partial loss of hair, he disclosed to him the grand mystery of his existence, by lifting from the summit of his head a circular piece of wig, which in those days they called I believe, a 'topping,' leaving a bare shining disc exposed, about the size of a large pat of butter. 'Upon my life, Thir, it'th a very fine piethe of work,' says Puddock, who viewed the wiglet with the eye of a stage-property man, and held it by a top lock near the candle. 'The very finetht piethe of work of the kind I ever thaw. 'Tith thertainly French. Oh, yeth--we can't do such thingth here. By Jove, Thir, what a wig that man would make for Cato!' 'An' he must be a mane crature--I say, a mane crature,' pursued O'Flaherty, 'for there was not a soul in the town but Jerome, the--the treacherous ape, that knew it. It's he that dhresses my head every morning behind the bed-curtain there, with the door locked. And Nutter could never have found it out--_who_ was to tell him, unless that ojus French damon, that's never done talkin' about it;' and O'Flaherty strode heavily up and down the room with his hands in his breeches' pockets, muttering savage invectives, pitching his head from side to side, and whisking round at the turns in a way to show how strongly he was wrought upon. 'Come in, Sorr!' thundered O'Flaherty, unlocking the door, in reply to a knock, and expecting to see his 'ojus French damon.' But it was a tall fattish stranger, rather flashily dressed, but a little soiled, with a black wig, and a rollicking red face, showing a good deal of chin and jaw. O'Flaherty made his grandest bow, quite forgetting the exposure at the top of his head; and Puddock stood rather shocked, with the candle in one hand and O'Flaherty's scalp in the other.