Be this as it may, it enabled the sagacious epicures who lived upon them to retire, in due course, to the delightful retreats of Skull and Skibbereen,* and similar asylums, there to pass the very short remainder of their lives in health, ease, and luxury.
* Two poor-houses in the most desolate parts of the County of Cork, where famine, fever, dysentery, and cholera, rendered more destructive by the crowded state of the houses and the consequent want of ventilation, swept away the wretched in-mates to the amount, if we recollect rightly, of sometimes from fifty to seventy per diem in the years '45 and '47.
The evening, as we have said, was about the close of September, when the two equestrians we speak of were proceeding at a pace necessarily slow.
One of them was a bluff, fresh-complexioned man, of about sixty summers; but although of a healthy look, and a frame that had evidently once been vigorous, yet he was a good deal stooped, had about him all the impotence of plethora, and his hair, which fell down his shoulders, was white as snow.

The other, who rode pretty close to him, was much about his own age, or perhaps a few years older, if one could judge by a face that gave more undeniable evidences of those furrows and wrinkles which Time usually leaves behind him.

This person did not ride exactly side by side with the first-mentioned, but a little aback, though not so far as to prevent the possibility of conversation.

At this time it may be mentioned here that every man that could afford it wore a wig, with the exception of some of those eccentric individuals that are to be found in every state and period of society, and who are remarkable for that peculiar love of singularity which generally constitutes their character--a small and harmless ambition, easily gratified, and involving no injury to their fellow-creatures.

The second horseman, therefore, wore a wig, but the other, although he eschewed that ornament, if it can be called so, was by no means a man of that mild and harmless character which we have attributed to the eccentric and unfashionable class of whom we have just spoken.