The Fortunes of Hector O'Halloran, and His Man, Mark Antony O'Toole. W. H. Maxwell

like every thing a man dislikes, I determined to procrastinate it and trust to fortune.

      “Samuel,” said the sweetest voice imaginable, “does thy head ache? Let me apply this essence and passing her hand gently through the curtains, she bathed my temples with eau-de-Cologne. My arm was outside the coverlid,—she took my hand in hers and pressed it affectionately.

      “How feverish!” she murmured. “But here comes Ruth, with something our mother sends, which will allay thy thirst.”

      The stiff-backed abigail deposited the liquid on a table.

      “Come, Rachel, sleep will restore thy brother.” Then addressing herself to me, “Farewell, friend Samuel,—may this be the last of thy foolishness and after this flattering admonition, she exited from the chamber, stiff as a ramrod.

      “Farewell, dear brother,”—and Rachel again clasped my hand in hers,—“good night! I trust sincerely I shall find thee better in the morning.”

      “Stop!” I mumbled. “Rachel, dear,—dear Rachel!”

      “What, my brother?”

      “The—the—the kiss of peace!” I managed to stammer from beneath the bed coverings.

      “Willingly, dear Samuel;” and lips, “full, rosy, ripe,” were artlessly pressed to mine, while a prayer, pure from a guileless heart, implored pardon for the past, and a blessing for the future. The next moment the door was softly closed, and I “left alone in my glory.”

      Would it be credited that under such circumstances had the audacity to sleep? But sleep I did—and when I slept, my head was on a peaceful pillow, and the kiss of innocence still fragrant on my lips.

CHAPTER VIII. LIFE IN A WATCH-HOUSE

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      “I’ll ne’er be drunk while I live again but in honest, civil, godly company, for this trick; if I be drunk, I’ll be drunk with those that have the fear of God, and not with drunken knaves.”—Merry Wives of Windsor.

      Reader,—will you make a clean breast and answer a simple question?—Were you ever regularly cribbed, and deposited for safe keeping in a watch-house? Don’t confound places, and suppose for a moment, that I mean those réfugia peccatorum, now-a-days called “station-houses.” The two are no more alike, than the London Tavern is to a boiled-beef shop. If you reply to my inquiry in the negative, and art young, I can only say the mischief is irremediable—and for the best reason, because watch-houses have been defunct these twenty years. If, like myself, you are a gentleman of a certain age, and also plead ignorance—you have nothing left but to mourn over misspent time, and lament a misfortune, for which no one is blamable but yourself.

      Many a jovial hour have I passed in St. Andrews—I don’t mean the Scotch College so called, but the Dublin watch-house of pleasant memory; and I have also occasionally favoured with a visit other establishments of the same kind, where belated gentlemen were sure to find the door open without having the trouble of knocking twice:—but who, except “upon compulsion,” would enter a modern bastile? The place is in everything an abomination, and so republican wherewithal in its regulations, as to be fitted only for the reception of the canaille. There, captains and cabmen are placed upon a par. “Look to him, jailer,” is the only order that is attended to; and whether you belong to swells West-end, or the swell-mob, matters not a brass button. The thing’s similar all through, and you undergo the same process of purification. You are cooped up all night, thermometer in summer 110, in winter down to zero—and bundled before the Beak in the morning all “unkempt” and with “marvellous foul linen.” Of course, you are not flat enough to give your real name. If you are a tradesman, why you wish to “come it genteel,” and pass for the time being as Mr. Ferdinand Fitzsnooks. If, on the contrary, you happen to be a “top-sawyer,” you descend from your “high estate,” and—though “Baron or Squire, or Knight of the Shire,”—adopt “for the nonce,” the simpler appellation of Smith, Brown, or Robinson. Well, in due course, you are favoured with a hearing—the charges are proven, and the Worthy Magistrate—he’s always so termed in the Sunday papers—runs you up a bill as glibly as the waitress of an eating-house. Imprimis, you are scored down five shillings for being drunk—forty ditto, for assault and battery—as much more for jingling some Doctor’s bell—and the tale ends in your five-pound flimsy having got a regular sickener. You fork the money out, and prepare directly to make your exit; but hold, you are not safe yet—wait for the parting admonition. Beaky having first premised that your name is neither Smith, Brown, nor Robinson, is sorry to assure you that he considers you a disgrace to your family and order—and, after a flattering panegyric upon his own nice sense of what is due to public justice, he concludes with a positive assurance, that if you ever renew your acquaintance with him, so far from standing “betwixt the wind and your nobility,” you shall have the benefit of a month’s exercise on the tread-mill, “and no mistake.” And now comes Mr. Ferdinand Fitzsnooks. He stands forward—but how different is his bearing from that of the pseudo Mr. Smith, who has just jumped into a cab in waiting, with coronets emblazoned on the panels. He does not listen to the charges with inattention; nor does he venture to meet the magistrate’s eye, as it occasionally is turned to that part of the court where he stands. He has been silly and noisy and riotous—but he has done no mischief. He is found guilty, and fined three pounds. The pale girl behind him—she with the infant in her arms—begins to sob, while Ferdinand appeals to the bench, and on the plea of a first offence, solicits a remission of the penalty. But Rhadamanthus is not sterner than his judge. Pshaw! worthy sir, let him go! he is but a drudge in a lawyer’s office—his master is strict—he will lose his situation, and what will that pale girl and her infant do? No; the upright magistrate is obdurate—and the slang of what “justice requires” is his only answer to the prisoner’s appeal. The jailer, a filthy, dogged, drunken, red-nosed brute, taps him on the shoulder and inquires, in pickpocket parlance, whether he can “stump the rowdy?” A melancholy shake of the head tells his inability, and he is committed for—what?—want of money—to the House of Correction for a fortnight. Worthy sir—pause before you send that silly young man to prison. Look at his wife—she is barely eighteen—young, pretty, and inexperienced. She has not a relative in London,—and steeped in poverty and surrounded with temptations, will you rob her for fourteen days of her protector, because he cannot command three sovereigns? True, you fined Mr. Smith two pounds more, and also talked something about the tread-mill—but, for your very life, you would not have ventured to commit him. I could show you Mr. Smith’s name in the peerage—ay, and high up, too; and he could have as easily given you a cheque upon his bankers for five thousand, as he handed you the penalty of five pounds. And this is law!—England, England! you call yourself the land of freedom!

      But what has all this to do with your story? Reader,—I beg your pardon, and thank you for the hint.

      The hatch of St. Andrew’s watch-house—a sort of outer-door, only breast-high, but furnished with a row of iron spikes which would bid defiance to Harlequin himself—was closed—and, a very unusual occurrence at that late hour, all within the house of durance was quiet. Peter Bradley, the captain of the hold, was seated on a wooden bench in his accustomed corner, with a little table before him, on which was awfully displayed the fatal book in which delinquencies were chronicled, flanked by a pewter vessel full charged with Sweetman’s XXX. Three guardians of the night, who formed the jail-guard, sate round the fire “drawing” a comfortable dudheine, and casting, from time to time, a longing eye at the battered quart deposited beside the elbow of the commander. There were other occupants—for occasionally melancholy faces peeped through a grated wicket in the door, which separated the dungeon-keep from the guard-room,—and from their place of captivity looked anxiously at the great man seated in the corner, whose nod could loose or bind. Indeed the task of watch and ward was easy, for the prisoners were comprised in one solitary group, namely—a drunken sailor, a fiddler with one leg, and “a maid who