“Well,” replied the other, “I dare say you are right.  Casey, go out and leave us to ourselves.”

There was a little hall in the house, which hall was in complete obscurity.  Barney availed himself of this circumstance, opened the door and clapped it to as if he had gone out, but remained at the same time in the inside.

“No, sir,” replied Sol Donnel, ignorant of the trick which Barney had played upon him, “I never allow a third person to be present at any of those conversations about the strength and power of my herbs.  Now, tell me, what it is that you want me to do for you.”

“Why, to tell you the truth,” replied Greatrakes, “I never heard of your name until within a few days ago, that you were mentioned to me by Mr. Henry Woodward, who told me that you gave him a dose to settle a dog that was laboring under the first symptoms of hydrophobia.  Well, the dog is dead by the influence of the bottle you gave him; but now that we are by ourselves I tell you at once that I want a dose for a man who is likely, if he lives, to cut me out of a large property.”

“O, Cheernah!” exclaimed the old villain, “do you think that I who lives by curin’ the poor for nothing, or next to nothing, could lend myself to sich a thing as that?”

“Very well,” replied the other, preparing to take his departure, “you have lost fifty pounds by the affair at all events.”

“Fifty pounds!” exclaimed the other, whilst his keen and diabolical eyes gleamed with the united spirit of avarice and villany.  “Fifty pounds! well how simple and foolish some people are.  Why now, if you had a dog, say a setter or a pointer, that from fear of madness you wished to get rid of, and that you had mentioned it to me, I could give you a bottle that would soon settle it; I don’t go above a dog or the inferior animals, and no man that has his senses about him ought to ask me to do anything else.”

“Well, then, I tell you at once that, as I said, it is not for a dog, but for a worse animal, a man, my own cousin, who, unless I absolutely contrive to poison him, will deprive me of six thousand a year.  Instead of fifty I shall make the recompense a hundred, after having found that your medicine is successful.”

The old villain’s eye gleamed again at the prospect of such liberality.

“Well now,” said he, “see what it is for a pious man to forget his devotions, even for one day.  I forgot to say my Leadan Wurrah this mornin’, and that is the raison that your temptation has overcome me.  You must call then to-morrow night, because I have nothing now, barrin’ what ’ud excite the bowels, and it seems that isn’t what you want; but if you be down here about this same hour to-morrow night, you shall have what will put your enemy out of the way.”

“That will do then,” replied Greatrakes, “and I shall depend on you.”

“Ay,” replied the old villain, “but remember that the act is not mine but your own.  I simply furnish you with the necessary means—­your own act will be to apply them.”