'But you must not spoil it--and fatigue will do that for you,' remarked Toole.

'But, Sir, Sir--I beg pardon, Doctor Toole--but this case is not quite a common one. What Doctor Sturk is about to say may acquire an additional legal value by his understanding precisely the degree of danger in which he lies. Now, Doctor Sturk, you must not be over much disturbed,' said Lowe.

'No, Sir--don't fear me--I'm not much disturbed,' said Sturk.

'Well, Doctor Toole,' continued Lowe, 'we must depart a little here from regular medical routine--tell Doctor Sturk plainly all you think.'

'Why--a'--and Doctor Toole cleared his voice, and hesitated.

'Tell him what you and Doctor Dillon think, Sir. Why, Doctor Dillon spoke very plainly to me.'

'I don't like his pulse, Sir. I think you had better not have agitated him,' muttered Toole with an impatient oath.

''Tis worse to keep his mind doubtful, and on the stretch,' said Lowe.

'Doctor Toole, Sir, has told you the bright side of the case. It is necessary, making the deposition you propose, that you should know t'other.'

'Yes, of course--quite right--go on,' said Sturk faintly.

'Why, you know,' said Toole, sniffing, and a little sulkily, 'you know, Doctor Sturk, we, doctors, like to put the best foot foremost; but you can't but be aware, that with the fractures--_two_ fractures--along the summit of the skull, and the operation by the trepan, behind your head, just accomplished, there must be, of course, some danger.'

'I see. Sir,' said Sturk, very quietly, but looking awfully cadaverous; 'all I want to know is, how long you think I may live?'

'You may recover altogether, Sir--you may--but, of course--you may--there's a chance; and things might not go right,' said Toole, taking snuff.

'I see--Sir--'tis enough'--and there was a pause. 'I'd like to have the sacrament, and pray with the clergyman a little--Lord help me!--and my will--only a few words--I don't suppose there's much left me; but there's a power of appointment--a reversion of 600, stock--I'm tired.'

'Here, take this,' said Toole, and put half-a-dozen spoonsful of claret and water into his lips, and he seemed to revive a little. 'There's no immediate hurry--upon my honour, Doctor Sturk, there isn't,' said Toole.

'Just rest aisy a bit; you're disturbed a good deal, Sir; your pulse shows it; and you need not, I a.s.sure you, upon my conscience and honour--'tis quite on the cards you may recover.'

And as he spoke, Toole was dropping something from a phial into a wine-gla.s.s--sal volatile--ether--I can't say; but when Dr. Sturk swallowed it there was a 'potter-carrier's' aroma about the room.

Then there was a pause for a while, and Toole kept his fingers on his pulse; and Sturk looked, for some time, as if he were on the point of fainting, which, in his case, might have proved very like dying.

'Have you the claret bottle in the room?' demanded Toole, a little flurried; for Sturk's pulses were playing odd pranks, and bounding and sinking in a dance of death.

'The what, Sir?' asked the maid.

'The _wine_, woman--this instant,' said the doctor, with a little stamp.

So, the moment he had the bottle, he poured out half a large gla.s.s, and began spooning it into Sturk's white parted lips.

Lowe looked on very uneasily; for he expected, as Toole did also, prodigious revelations; though each had a suspicion that he divined their nature tolerably clearly.

'Give him some more,' said Toole, with his fingers on the sick man's wrist, and watching his countenance. 'D---- it, don't be afraid--more, some more--more!'

And so the Artillery doctor's spirit revived within him; though with flickerings and tremblings; and he heaved some great sighs, and moved his lips. Then he lay still for a while; and after that he spoke.

'The pen, Sir,--write,' he said. 'He met me in the Butcher's Wood; he said he was going to sleep in town,' and Sturk groaned dismally; 'and he began talking on business--and turned and walked a bit with me. I did not expect to see him there--he was frank--and spoke me fair. We were walking slowly. He looked up in the sky with his hands in his coat pockets and was a step, or so, in advance of me; and he turned short--I didn't know--I had no more fear than you--and struck me a blow with something he had in his hand. He rose to the blow on his toes--'twas so swift, I had no time--I could not see what he struck with, 'twas like a short bit of rope.'

'Charles Archer? Do you know him, Dr. Toole?' asked Lowe. Toole shook his head.

'Charles Archer!' he repeated, looking at Sturk; 'where does he live?'

and he winked to Toole, who was about speaking, to hold his peace.

'Here--in this town--Chapelizod, up the river, a bit, with--with a--changed name,' answered Sturk. And at the name he mentioned, Lowe and Toole, in silence and steadfastly, exchanged a pale, grim glance that was awful to see.

CHAPTER Lx.x.xIX.

IN WHICH A CERTAIN SONGSTER TREATS THE COMPANY TO A DOLOROUS BALLAD WHEREBY MR. IRONS IS SOMEWHAT MOVED.

It seemed that Mr. Dangerfield had taken Zekiel Irons's measure pretty exactly. The clerk had quite made up his mind to take the bold step urged upon him by that gentleman. He was a slow man. When one idea had fairly got into his head there was no room there for another. Cowardly and plotting; but when his cowardice was wrought upon to a certain pitch, he would wax daring and fierce from desperation.

He walked down to the village from the little gate of the Bra.s.s Castle, where he had talked with Mr. Dangerfield, appointing eight o'clock next morning for making the deposition; late now for all purposes; but to nail him to a line of _viva voce_ evidence when he should come to be examined on Charles Nutter's approaching trial. The whole way along he walked with the piece of silver, which Mr. Paul Dangerfield had given him, griped tight in his crooked fingers, in his breeches' pocket--no change in his grim and sinister face--no turn of the head--no side glance of the eye--all dark, rigid, and tense.

The mechanism of long habit brought him round the corner to the door of the Salmon House, the 'public' facing, but with the length of the street interposing, the Phoenix, whose lights were visible through and under the branches of the village tree. His mind wandered back to the Mills with a shock, and glided stealthily past the Bra.s.s Castle without dwelling there, and he looked down the street. Over the bridge at the Elms, lay death in its awful purity. At his left, in the Gray Stone House, was Doctor Sturk--the witness with sealed lips--the victim of Charles Archer's mysterious prowess; and behind lay the church-yard, and the quiet little church with that vault and nameless coffin.

Altogether, the suggestions and a.s.sociations about him were not cheerful or comfortable. He squeezed the silver--Dangerfield's little remembrance--with a furious strain, and ground his teeth.

'I'm like a man surrounded. I wish I was out of it all!' he muttered, with a care-worn glance.

So he entered the public-house.

There was not much business doing. Three friends, Smithfield dealers, or some such folk, talking loudly over their liquor of prices and prospects; and one fat fellow, by the fire, smoking a pipe, with a large gla.s.s of punch at his elbow.

'Ah, then, Mr. Irons, an' is it yourself that's in it? and where in the world wor ye all this time?' said the landlady.

'Business, Ma'am, business, Mrs. Molloy.'

'An' there's your chair waitin' for you beside the fire, Mr. Irons, this month an' more--a cowld evening--and we all wondherin' what in the wide world was gone widg ye--this I do'no how long.'

'Thank ye, Ma'am--a pipe and a gla.s.s o' punch.'

Irons was always a man of few words, and his laconics did not strike Mistress Molloy as anything very strange. So she wiped the little table at his side, and with one foot on the fender, and his elbow on his knee, he smoked leisurely into the fire-place.

To look at his face you would have supposed he was thinking; but it was only that sort of foggy vacuity which goes by the name of 'a brown study.' He never thought very clearly or connectedly; and his apathetic reveries, when his mood was gloomy, were furnished forth in a barren and monotonous way, with only two or three frightful figures, and a dismal scenery that seldom shifted.

The three gentlemen at the table called for more liquor, and the stout personage, sitting opposite to Irons, dropped into their talk, having smoked out his pipe, and their conversation became more general and hilarious; but Irons scarce heard it. Curiosity is an idle minx, and a soul laden like the clerk's has no entertainment for her. But when one of the three gentlemen who sat together--an honest but sad-looking person with a flaxen wig, and a fat, florid face--placing his hand in the breast of his red plush waistcoat, and throwing himself back in his chair, struck up a dismal tune, with a certain character of psalmody in it, the clerk's ear was charmed for a moment, and he glanced on the singer and sipped some punch; and the ballad, rude and almost rhymeless, which he chanted had an undefined and unpleasant fascination for Irons.

It was thus:--

'A man there was near Ballymooney, Was guilty of a deed o' blood, For thravellin' alongside iv ould Tim Rooney.

He kilt him in a lonesome wood.

'He took his purse, and his hat and cravat.

And stole his buckles and his prayer-book, too; And neck-and-heels, like a cruel savage, His corpus through the wood he drew.

'He pult him over to a big bog-hole, And sunk him undher four-foot o' wather, And built him down wid many a thumpin' stone.