"There is something very queer in this, after all. The clothes, you say, have positively disappeared. Somebody is playing you a trick; and, ten to one, your servant has a hand in it. By the way, I heard something yesterday of his kicking up a bobbery in the kitchen, and seeing a ghost, or something of that kind, himself. Depend upon it, Barney is in the plot." It now struck the lieutenant at once, that the usually buoyant spirits of his attendant had of late been materially sobered down, his loquacity obviously circumscribed, and that he, the said lieutenant, had actually rung his bell three several times that very morning before he could procure his attendance. Mr. Maguire was forthwith summoned, and underwent a close examination. The "bobbery" was easily explained. Mr. Oliver Dobbs had hinted his disapprobation of a flirtation carrying on between the gentleman from Munster and the lady from the Rue St. Honoré. Mademoiselle had boxed Mr. Maguire's ears, and Mr. Maguire had pulled Mademoiselle upon his knee, and the lady had _not_ cried _Mon Dieu!_ And Mr. Oliver Dobbs said it was very wrong; and Mrs. Botherby said it was "scandalous," and what ought not to be done in any moral kitchen; and Mr. Maguire had got hold of the Honourable Augustus Sucklethumbkin's powder-flask, and had put large pinches of the best double Dartford into Mr. Dobbs's tobacco-box;--and Mr. Dobbs's pipe had exploded, and set fire to Mrs. Botherby's Sunday cap;--and Mr. Maguire had put it out with the slop-basin, "barring the wig;"--and then they were all so "cantankerous," that Barney had gone to take a walk in the garden; and then--then Mr. Barney had seen a ghost!! "A what? you blockhead!" asked Tom Ingoldsby. "Sure then, and it's meself will tell your honour the rights of it," said the ghost-seer. "Meself and Miss Pauline, sir,--or Miss Pauline and meself, for the ladies comes first anyhow,--we got tired of the hobstroppylous skrimmaging among the ould servants, that didn't know a joke when they seen one: and we went out to look at the comet,--that's the rory-bory-alehouse, they calls him in this country,--and we walked upon the lawn,--and divil of any alehouse there was there at all; and Miss Pauline said it was because of the shrubbery maybe, and why wouldn't we see it better beyonst the trees?--and so we went to the trees, but sorrow a comet did meself see there, barring a big ghost instead of it." "A ghost? And what sort of a ghost, Barney?"