The ladies were not much the wiser, though, I confess, they were not far removed from the door. The great men inside talked indistinctly and technically, and once Doctor Dillon was so unfeeling as to crack a joke — they could not distinctly hear what — and hee-haw brutally over it. And poor little Mrs. Sturk was taken with a great palpitation, and looked as white as a ghost, and was, indeed, so obviously at the point of swooning that her women would have removed her to the nursery, and placed her on the bed, but that such a procedure would have obliged them to leave the door of their sick master’s room, just then a point of too lively interest to be deserted. So they consoled their mistress, and supported her with such strong moral cordials as compassionate persons in their rank and circumstances are prompt to administer.

‘Oh! Ma’am, jewel, don’t be takin’ it to heart that way — though, dear knows, ’tis no way surprisin’ you would; for may I never sin if ever I seen such a murtherin’ steel gimblet as the red-faced docthor — I mane the Dublin man — has out on the table beside the poor masther —‘tid frighten the hangman to look at it — an’ six towels, too! Why, Ma’am dear, if ’twas what they wor goin’ to slaughter a bullock they wouldn’t ax more nor that.’

‘Oh! don’t. Oh! Katty, Katty — don’t, oh don’t’

‘An’ why wouldn’t I, my darlin’ misthress, tell you what’s doin’, the way you would not be dhruv out o’ your senses intirely if you had no notion, Ma’am dear, iv what they’re goin’ to do to him?’

At this moment the door opened, and Doctor Dillon’s carbuncled visage and glowing eyes appeared.

‘Is there a steady woman there — not a child, you know, Ma’am? A— you’ll do (to Katty). Come in here, if you please, and we’ll tell you what you’re to do.’

So, being nothing loath, she made her courtesy and glided in.

‘Oh! doctor,’ gasped poor Mrs. Sturk, holding by the hem of his garment, ‘do you think it will kill him?’

‘No, Ma’am — not to-night, at any rate,’ he answered, drawing back; but still she held him.

‘Oh! doctor, you think it will kill him?’

‘No, Ma’am — there’s always some danger.’

‘Danger of what, Sir?’

‘Fungus, Ma’am — if he gets over the chance of inflammation. But, on the other hand, Ma’am, we may do him a power of good; and see, Ma’am, ’twill be best for you to go down or into the nursery, and we’ll call you, Ma’am, if need be-that is, if he’s better, Ma’am, as we hope.’

‘Oh! Mr. Moore, it’s you,’ sobbed the poor woman, holding fast by the sleeve of the barber, who that moment, with many reverences and ‘your servant, Ma’am,’ had mounted to the lobby with the look of awestruck curiosity, in his long, honest face, which the solemn circumstance of his visit warranted.

‘You’re the man we sent for?’ demanded Dillon, gruffly.

‘’Tis good Mr. Moore,’ cried trembling little Mrs. Sturk, deprecating and wheedling him instinctively to make him of her side, and lead him to take part with her and resist all violence to her husband — flesh of her flesh, and bone of her bone.

‘Why don’t you spake, Sor-r-r? Are you the barber we sent for or no? What ails you, man?’ demanded the savage Doctor Dillon, in a suppressed roar.

‘At your sarvice, Ma’am — Sir,’ replied Moore, with submissive alacrity.

‘Come in here, then. Come in, will you?’ cried the doctor, hauling him in with his great red hand.

‘There now — there now — there — there,’ he said gruffly, extending his palm to keep off poor Mrs. Sturk.

So he shut the door, and poor Mrs. Sturk heard him draw the bolt, and felt that her Barney had passed out of her hands, and that she could do nothing for him now but clasp her hands and gasp up her prayers for his deliverance; and so great indeed was her anguish and panic, that she had not room for the feminine reflection how great a brute Doctor Dillon was.

So she heard them walking this way and that, but could not distinguish what they said, only she heard them talking; and once or twice a word reached her, but not very intelligible, such as —

‘’Twas Surgeon Beauchamp’s — see that’

‘Mighty curious.’

Then a lot of mumbling, and

‘Cruciform, of course.’

This was said by Doctor Dillon, near the door, where he had come to take an additional candle from the table that stood there; as he receded it lost itself in mumble again, and then she heard quite plainly —

‘Keep your hand there.’

And a few seconds after,

‘Hold it there and don’t let it drip.’

And then a little more mumbled dialogue, and she thought she heard —

‘Begin now.’

And there was a dead silence of many seconds; and Mrs. Sturk felt as if she must scream, and her heart beat at a gallop, and her dry, white lips silently called upon her Maker for help, and she felt quite wild, and very faint; and heard them speak brief, and low together, and then another long silence; and then a loud voice, in a sort of shriek, cry out that name — holy and awful — which we do not mix in tales like this. It was Sturk’s voice; and he cried in the same horrid shriek, ‘Murder — mercy — Mr. Archer!’

And poor Mrs. Sturk, with a loud hysterical cry, that quivered with her agony, answered from without, and wildly rattled at the door-handle, and pushed with all her feeble force to get in, in a kind of crescendo screaming —‘Oh, Barney — Barney — Barney — sweetheart — what are they doing?’

‘Oh! blessed hour!— Ma’am —’tis the master himself that is talking;’ and with a very pale face the maid, who stood in the doorway beside her, uttered her amazed thanksgiving.

And the doctors’ voices were now heard plainly enough soothing the patient, and he seemed to have grown more collected; and she heard him — she thought — repeat a snatch of a prayer, as a man might just rescued from a shipwreck; and he said in a tone more natural in one so sick and weak, ‘I’m a dead man — he’s done it — where is he?— he’s murdered me.’

‘Who?’ demanded Toole’s well-known voice.

‘Archer — the villain — Charles Archer.’

‘Give me the cup with the claret and water, and the spoon — there it is,’ said Dillon’s rough bass tones.

And she heard the maid’s step crossing the floor, and then there was a groan from Sturk.

‘Here, take another spoonful, and don’t mind talking for a while. It’s doing mighty well. There, don’t let him slip over — that’s enough.’

Just then Toole opened the door enough to put his head through, and gently restraining poor Mrs. Sturk with his hand, he said with a vigorous whisper —

‘’Twill all go well, Ma’am, we hope, if he’s not agitated; you must not go in, Ma’am, nor talk to him — by-and-by you may see him, but he must be quiet now; his pulse is very regular at present — but you see, Ma’am, we can’t be too cautious.’

While Toole was thus discoursing her at the door, she heard Dr. Dillon washing his hands, and Sturk’s familiar voice, sounding so strange after the long silence, say very languidly and slowly —

‘Take a pen, Sir — some one — take and write — write down what I say.’

‘Now, Ma’am, you see he’s bent on talking,’ said Toole, whose quick ear caught the promise of a revelation. ‘I must be at my post, Ma’am — the bed post — hey! We may joke now, Ma’am, that the patient’s recovered his speech; and, you know, you mustn’t come in-not till we tell you it’s safe — there now — rely on me — I give you my word of honour he’s doing as well as we could have hoped for.’

And Toole shook her trembling little hand very cordially, and there was a very good-natured twinkle in his eye.

And Toole closed the door again, and they heard Sturk murmur something more; and then the maid, who was within, was let out by Toole, and the door closed and bolted again, and a sort of cooing and murmuring recommenced.

After a while, Toole, absolutely pale, and looking very stern, opened the door, and, said he, in a quiet way —

‘Ma’am, may I send Katty down to the King’s House, with a note to Mr.— a note to the King’s House, Ma’am — I thank you — and see, Katty, good girl, ask to see the gentleman himself, and take his answer from his own lips.’

And he tore off the back of a letter, and pencilled on it these words —

‘MY DEAR SIR,— Dr. Sturk has been successfully operated upon by me and another gentleman; and being restored to speech and recollection, but very weak, desires earnestly to see you, and make an important disclosure to you as a justice of the peace.

‘I am, Sir, your very obedient, humble servant,

‘THOMAS TOOLE.

Upon this note he clapt a large seal with the Toole arms, and when it was complete, placed it in the hands of Katty, who, with her riding-hood on and her head within it teeming with all sorts of wild conjectures and horrible images, and her whole soul in a whirl of curiosity, hurried along the dark street, now and then glinted on by a gleam through a shutter, or enlivened by the jingle of a harpsichord, or a snatch of talk and laughter heard faintly through the windows, and along the Dublin-road to the gate of the King’s House. The hall-door of this hospitable mansion stood open, and a flood of red candle-light fell upon one side of the gray horse, saddle, and holster pipes, which waited the descent of Mr. Lowe, who was shaking hands with the hospitable colonel at the threshold.

Katty was just in time, and the booted gentleman, in his surtout and cape, strode back again into the light of the hall-door, and breaking the seal, there read, with his clear cold eye, the lines which Toole had pencilled, and thrusting it into his coat pocket, and receiving again the fuddled butler’s benedictions — he had given him half-a-crown — he mounted his gray steed, and at a brisk trot, followed by his servant, was, in little more than two minutes’ time, at Dr. Sturk’s door.

Moore, the barber, functus officio, was now sitting in the hall, with his razors in his pocket, expecting his fee, and smelling pleasantly of the glass of whiskey which he had just drunk to the health and long life of the master — God bless him — and all the family.

Doctor Toole met Mr. Lowe on the lobby; he was doing the honours of the ghastly eclaircissement, and bowed him up to the room, with many an intervening whisper, and a sort of apology for Dillon, whom he treated as quite unpresentable, and resolved to keep as much as practicable in the background.

But that gentleman, who exulted in a good stroke of surgery, and had no sort of professional delicacy, calling his absent fathers and brethren of the scalpel and forceps by confounded hard names when he detected a blunder or hit a blot of theirs, met Mr. Lowe on the upper lobby.

‘Your servant, Sir,’ said he, rubbing his great red hands with a moist grin; ‘you see what I’ve done. Pell’s no surgeon, no more than that —(Toole, he was going to say, but modified the comparison in time)— that candlestic............