Poor Mrs. Nutter continued in a state of distracted and flighty tribulation, not knowing what to make of it, nor, indeed, knowing the worst; for the neighbours did not tell her half they might, nor drop a hint of the dreadful suspicion that dogged her absent helpmate.

She was sometimes up rummaging among the drawers, and fidgeting about the house, without any clear purpose, but oftener lying on her bed, with her clothes on, crying. When she got hold of a friend, she disburthened her soul, and called on him or her for endless consolations and assurances, which, for the most part, she herself prescribed. There were, of course, fits of despair as well as starts of hope; and bright ideas, accounting for everything, and then clouds of blackness, and tornadoes of lamentation.

Father Roach, a good-natured apostle, whose digestion suffered when anyone he liked was in trouble, paid her a visit; and being somehow confounded with Dr. Toole, was shown up to her bed-room, where the poor little woman lay crying under the coverlet. On discovering where he was, the good father was disposed to flinch, and get down stairs, in tenderness to his ‘character,’ and thinking what a story ‘them villians o’ the world’id make iv it down at the club there.’ But on second thoughts, poor little Sally being neither young nor comely, he ventured, and sat down by the bed, veiled behind a strip of curtain, and poured his mellifluous consolations into her open ears.

And poor Sally became eloquent in return. And Father Roach dried his eyes, although she could not see him behind the curtain, and called her ‘my daughter,’ and ‘dear lady,’ and tendered such comforts as his housekeeping afforded. ‘Had she bacon in the house?’ or ‘maybe she’d like a fat fowl?’ ‘She could not eat?’ ‘Why then she could make elegant broth of it, and dhrink it, an’ he’d keep another fattenin’ until Nutter himself come back.’

‘And then, my honey, you an’ himself’ll come down and dine wid ould Father Austin; an’ we’ll have a grand evenin’ of it entirely, laughin’ over the remimbrance iv these blackguard troubles, acuishla! Or maybe you’d accept iv a couple o’ bottles of claret or canaries? I see — you don’t want for wine.’

So there was just one more offer the honest fellow had to make, and he opened with assurances ’twas only between himself an’ her — an’ not a sowl on airth ‘id ever hear a word about it — and he asked her pardon, but he thought she might chance to want a guinea or two, just till Nutter came back, and he brought a couple in his waistcoat pocket.

Poor Father Roach was hard-up just then. Indeed, the being hard-up was a chronic affection with him. Two horses were not to be kept for nothing. Nor for the same moderate figure was it possible to maintain an asylum for unfortunates and outlaws — pleasant fellows enough, but endowed with great appetites and an unquenchable taste for consolation in fluid forms.

A clerical provision in Father Roach’s day, and church, was not by any means what we have seen it since. At all events he was not often troubled with the possession of money, and when half-a-dozen good weddings brought him in fifty or a hundred pounds, the holy man was constrained forthwith to make distribution of his assets among a score of sour, and sometimes dangerous tradespeople. I mention this in no disparagement of Father Roach, quite the contrary. In making the tender of his two guineas — which, however, Sally declined — the worthy cleric was offering the widow’s mite; not like some lucky dogs who might throw away a thousand or two and be nothing the worse; and you may be sure the poor fellow was very glad to find she did not want it.

‘Rather hard measure, it strikes me,’ said Dangerfield, in the club, ‘to put him in the Hue-and-Cry.’

But there he was, sure enough, ‘Charles Nutter, Esq., formerly of the Mills, near Knockmaroon, in the county of Dublin;’ and a full description of the dress he wore, as well as of his height, complexion, features — and all this his poor little wife, still inhabiting the Mills, and quite unconscious that any man, woman, or child, who could prosecute him to conviction, for a murderous assault on Dr. Sturk, should have ￡50 reward.

‘News in today, by Jove,’ said Toole, bustling solemnly into the club; ‘by the packet that arrived at one o’clock, a man taken, answering Nutter’s description exactly, just going aboard of a Jamaica brig at Gravesend, and giving no account of himself. He’s to be sent over to Dublin for identification.’

And when that was thoroughly discussed two or three times over, they fell to talking of other subjects, and among the rest of Devereux, and wondered what his plans were; and, there being no brother officers by, whether he meant to keep his commission, and various speculations as to the exact cause of the coldness shown him by General Chattesworth. Dick Spaight thought it might be that he had not asked Miss Gertrude in marriage.

But this was pooh-poohed. ‘Besides, they knew at Belmont,’ said Toole, who was an authority upon the domestic politics of that family, and rather proud of being so, ‘just as well as I did that Gipsy Dick was in love with Miss Lilias; and I lay you fifty he’d marry her tomorrow if she’d have him.’

Toole was always a little bit more intimate with people behind their backs, so he called Devereux ‘Gipsy Dick.’

‘She’s ailing, I hear,’ said old Slowe.

‘She is, indeed, Sir,’ answered the doctor, with a grave shake of the head.

‘Nothing of moment, I hope?’ he asked.

‘Why, you see it may be; she had a bad cough last winter, and this year she took it earlier, and it has fallen very much on her lungs; and you see, we can’t say, Sir, what turn it may take, and I’m very sorry she should be so sick and ailing — she’s the prettiest creature, and the best little soul; and I don’t know, on my conscience, what the poor old parson would do if anything happened her, you know. But I trust, Sir, with care, you know, ’twill turn out well.’

The season for trout-fishing was long past and gone, and there were no more pleasant rambles for Dangerfield and Irons along the flowery banks of the devious Liffey. Their rods and nets hung up, awaiting the return of genial spring; and the churlish stream, abandoned to its wintry mood, darkled and roared savagely under the windows of the Brass Castle.

One dismal morning, as Dangerfield’s energetic step carried him briskly through the town, ............