After church, Dr. Toole walking up to the Mills, to pay an afternoon visit to poor little Mrs. Nutter, was overtaken by Mr. Lowe, the magistrate who brought his tall, iron-gray hunter to a walk as he reached him.

‘Any tidings of Nutter?’ asked he, after they had, in the old world phrase, given one another the time of day.

‘Not a word,’ said the doctor; ‘I don’t know what to make of it; but you know what’s thought. The last place he was seen in was his own garden. The river was plaguy swollen Friday night, and just where he stood it’s deep enough, I can tell you; often I bathed there when I was a boy. He was consumedly in the dumps, poor fellow; and between ourselves, he was a resolute dog, and atrabilious, and just the fellow to make the jump into kingdom-come if the maggot bit: and you know his hat was fished out of the river a long way down. They dragged next morning, but — pish!—’twas all nonsense and moonshine; why, there was water enough to carry him to Ringsend in an hour. He was a good deal out of sorts, as I said, latterly — a shabby design, Sir, to thrust him out of my Lord Castlemallard’s agency; but that’s past and gone; and, besides, I have reason to know there was some kind of an excitement — a quarrel it could not be-poor Sally Nutter’s too mild and quiet for that; but a — a — something — a — an — agitation — or a bad news — or something — just before he went out; and so, poor Nutter, you see, it looks very like as if he had done something rash.’

Talking thus, they reached the Mills by the river side, not far from Knockmaroon.

On learning that Toole was about making a call there, Lowe gave his bridle to a little Chapelizod ragamuffin, and, dismounting, accompanied the doctor. Mrs. Nutter was in her bed.

‘Make my service to your mistress,’ said Toole, ‘and say I’ll look in on her in five minutes, if she’ll admit me.’ And Lowe and the doctor walked on to the garden, and so side by side down to the river’s bank.

‘Hey!— look at that,’ said Toole, with a start, in a hard whisper; and he squeezed Lowe’s arm very hard, and looked as if he saw a snake.

It was the impression in the mud of the same peculiar foot-print they had tracked so far in the park. There was a considerable pause, during which Lowe stooped down to examine the details of the footmark.

‘Hang it — you know — poor Mrs. Nutter — eh?’ said Toole, and hesitated.

‘We must make a note of that — the thing’s important,’ said Mr. Lowe, sternly fixing his gray eye upon Toole.

‘Certainly, Sir,’ said the doctor, bridling; ‘I should not like to be the man to hit him — you know; but it is remarkable — and, curse it, Sir, if called on, I’ll speak the truth as straight as you, Sir — every bit, Sir.’

And he added an oath, and looked very red and heated.

The magistrate opened his pocket-book, took forth the pattern sole, carefully superimposed it, called Toole’s attention, and said —

‘You see.’

Toole nodded hurriedly; and just then the maid came out to ask him to see her mistress.

‘I say, my good woman,’ said Lowe; ‘just look here. Whose foot-print is that — do you know it?’

‘Oh, why, to be sure I do. Isn’t it the master’s brogues?’ she replied, frightened, she knew not why, after the custom of her kind.

‘You observe that?’ and he pointed specially to the transverse line across the heel. ‘Do you know that?’

The woman assented.

‘Who made or mended these shoes?’

‘Bill Heaney, the shoemaker, down in Martin’s-row, there —’twas he made them, and mended them, too, Sir.’

So he came to a perfect identification, and then an authentication of his paper pattern; then she could say they were certainly the shoes he wore on Friday night — in fact, every other pair he had were then on the shoe-stand on the lobby. So Lowe entered the house, and got pen and ink, and continued to question the maid and make little notes; and the other maid knocked at the parlour door with a message to Toole.

Lowe urged his going; and somehow Toole thought the magistrate suspected him of making signs to his witness, and he departed ill at ease; and at the foot of the stairs he said to the woman —

‘You had better go in there — that stupid Lynn is doing her best to hang your master, by Jove!’

And the woman cried —

‘Oh, dear, bless us!’

Toole was stunned and agitated, and so with his hand on the clumsy banister he strode up the dark staircase, and round the little corner in the lobby, to Mrs. Nutter’s door.

‘Oh, Madam, ’twill all come right, be sure,’ said Toole, uncomfortably, responding to a vehement and rambling appeal of poor Mrs. Nutter’s.

‘And do you really think it will? Oh, doctor, doctor, do you think it will? The last two or three nights and days — how many is it?— oh, my poor head — it seems like a month since he went away.’

‘And where do you think he is? Do you think it’s business?’

‘Of course ’tis business, Ma’am.’

‘And — and — oh, doctor!— you really think he’s safe?’

‘Of course, Madam, he’s safe — what’s to ail him?’

And Toole rummaged amongst the old medicine phials on the chimneypiece, turning their labels round and round, but neither seeing them nor thinking about them, and only muttering to himself with, I’m sorry to say, ............