“Well, ma'am, what passed between them afterwards I never heard said; but the captain took his leave, and left my grandfather so delighted and overjoyed that he finished all the sherry in the drawer, and when the head clerk came in to ask for an invoice, or a thing of the kind, he found old Mr. Dempsey with his wig on the high stool, and he bowing round it, and calling it your Grace. There 's no denying it, ma'am, he was blind drunk. “About ten days or a fortnight after this time, my grandfather received a note from Teesum and Twist, the solicitors, stating that the draft or the bond was already drawn up for the loan he was about to make his Grace, and begging to know to whom it was to be submitted. “'The captain will win his bet, devil a lie in it,' said my grandfather; 'he's going to bring the Duke and myself together.' “Well, ma'am, I won't bother you with the law business, though if my father was telling the story he would not spare you one item of it all,--who read this, and who signed the other, and the objections that was made by them thieving attorneys! and how the Solicitor-General struck out this and put in that clause; but to tell you the truth, ma'am, I think that all the details spoil, what we may call, the poetry of the narrative; it is finer to say he paid the money, and the Duke pocketed it. “Well, weeks went over and months long, and not a bit of the Duke did my grandfather see, nor M'Claverty either; he never came near him. To be sure, his Grace drank as much sherry as ever; indeed, I believe out of love to my grandfather they drank little else. From the bishops and the chaplain, down to the battle-axe guards, it was sherry, morning, noon, and night; and though this was very pleasing to my grandfather, he was always wishing for the time when he was to be presented to his Grace, and their friendship was to begin. My grandfather could think of nothing else, daylight and dark. When he walked, he was always repeating to himself what his Grace might say to him, and what he would say to his Grace; and he was perpetually going up at eleven o'clock, when the guard was relieved in the Castle-yard, suspecting that every now and then a footman in blue and silver would come out, and, touching his elbow, whisper in his ear, 'Mr. Dempsey, the Duke 's waiting for you.' But, my dear ma'am, he might have waited till now, if Providence had spared him, and the devil a taste of the same message would ever have come near him, or a sight of the same footman in blue! It was neither more nor less than a delusion, or an illusion, or a confusion, or whatever the name of it is. At last, ma'am, in one of his prowlings about the Phoenix Park, who does he come on but M'Claverty? He was riding past in a great hurry; but he pulled up when he saw my grandfather, and called out, 'Hang it! who's this? I ought to know _you_.'