There is a time in reverie when silence seems not to encourage thought, but rather, like some lowering cloud, to hang over and spread a gloomy insensibility around us. Long watching and much thinking had brought me now to this; and I sat looking upon the faint streak of sunlight that streamed through the barred window, and speculating within myself when it would fall upon the hearth. Suddenly I heard the sound of footsteps in the corridor; my door was opened, and the jailer entered, followed by a man carrying my breakfast. “Come, sir,” said the former, “I hope you have got an appetite for our prison fare. Lose no time; for there is a carriage in waiting to bring you to the Castle, and the major himself is without.” “I am ready this moment,” said I, starting up, and taking my hat; and notwithstanding every entreaty to eat, made with kindness and good-nature, I refused everything, and followed him out into the courtyard, where Barton was pacing up and down, impatiently awaiting our coming. CHAPTER XV. THE CASTLE. Scarcely had the carriage driven from the gloomy portals of the jail, and entered one of the long, straggling streets that led towards the river, when I noticed a singular-looking figure who ran alongside, and kept up with us as we went. A true type of the raggedness of old Dublin, his clothes fluttered behind him like ribbons; even from his hat, his long, red hair straggled and streamed, while his nether garments displayed a patchwork no tartan could vie with. His legs were bare, save where a single topboot defended one of them; the other was naked to the foot, clad in an old morocco slipper, which he kicked up and caught again as he went with surprising dexterity, accompanying the feat with a wild yell which might have shamed a warwhoop. He carried a bundle of printed papers over one arm; and flourished one of them in his right hand, vociferating something all the while with uncommon energy. Scarcely had the carriage drawn up at the door of an old-fashioned brick building when he was beside it. “How are ye. Major? How is every bit of you, sir? Are ye taking them this mornin'--'t is yourself knows how! Buy a ha'porth, sir.” “What have you got to-day, Toby?” said the major, with a greater degree of complacency in his manner than I had ever noticed before. “An illigant new song about Buck Whaley; or maybe you 'd like 'Beresford's Jig, or the Humors of Malbro' Green.'” “Why, man, they 're old these three weeks.” “True for ye, Major. Begorra! there 's no chating you at all, at all. Well, maybe you 'll have this: here 's the bloody and cruel outrage committed by the yeomen on the body of a dacent and respectable young man, by the name of Darby M'Keown, with the full and true account of how he was inhumanly stabbed and murdered on the eighth day of July--” “Ay, give me that. I hope they 've done for that scoundrel; I have been on his track three years.”