But Oliver (as he told me afterwards) not thinking it advisable to be seen in more public houses than necessary--considering the business we were on--purposely led the way to one near the river of which he knew, by as circuitous a route as possible, so that, ere we had gone half a mile, Roderick called a halt for another refresher. All the way we had come he had been maundering about the treatment he had received at the tavern, about the desertion of him by the actresses, and about his friend's treachery, mixed up with boastings of his father's standing, his speech being very thick and his gait unsteady. So that the same hope was in Oliver's mind as in mine, namely that another attack upon the bottle might do his business for him. Yet, when he had taken it, he was not quite finished--though nearly so, since he would once or twice have fallen had we not held him up between us as we went along,--and we were fain at last to suggest a third pull at the flask. And shortly after he had taken that he could go no farther but, after hiccoughing out some unintelligible words, sank helpless on the stones. "Caught in their own toils!" exclaimed Oliver, as he bent over him, "caught in their own toils! Gerald, already the spell begins to work that shall undo your uncle. Yet, if this were not the son of a villain, and a villain himself in the future if he be not one now, as by his rejoicing over the plot in the tavern he seems to be, I would never have taken part in such a snare as this. But," he continued, "they would have sent you, poor lad, to where he is going, and he would have gloated over it. Let us, therefore, harden our hearts and continue what we have begun." He stooped over Roderick as he spoke and gazed at him as he lay there insensible, and said, "We must remove from him his lace and ruffles; they are too fine. His hat with its lacings is easily disposed of," saying which he tossed it on a heap of refuse such as was then to be found in every street in Dublin. "His clothes," he continued, "are, however, none too sumptuous, and they are soiled with mud where he has fallen. His sword he must not have however," with which words he unloosed it as well as the sash and placed the former against a doorway and the latter in his pocket. "Now," he said, "let us carry him to the stairs," and he forthwith hoisted him on his back as easily as he had hundreds of times hoisted a sheep in a similar manner.