Darby looked him in the face with a peculiar expression—­

“Yes, sir,” said he; “plaise God, justice shall be rendhered as you say—­no doubt of that.”

He then left the house, and ere he had proceeded a score yards, turned and said—­

“Yes, you netarnal villain—­you know the justice you and M’Clutchy rendhered me—­bad luck to you both, I pray, this day!  Any how it’ll soon come back to yez.”

In a few minutes Solomon was on his way, with an anxious expectation that he had been called upon to draw up Deaker’s will.

Val, on reaching his father’s, heard from Tom Corbet, with a good deal of surprise, that Solomon had been sent for expressly.  A glance, however, at the invalid induced him to suppose that such a message could proceed from nothing but the wild capricious impulses under which he labored.  Much to his surprise also, and indeed to his mortification, he found before him two gentlemen, whom Deaker, who it appears had been conscious of his approaching dissolution, had sent for, with his usual shrewdness, to guard and preserve his loose property from his unfortunate housekeeper on the one hand, and his virtuous son Val, on the other.  These gentlemen were his cousins, and indeed we are inclined to think that their presence at that precise period was, considering all things, rather seasonable than otherwise.  They had not, however, arrived many minutes before Val, so that when he came, they were still in one of the parlors, waiting for Deaker’s permission to see him.  A little delay occurred; but the moment Val entered, with his usual privilege he proceeded straight to the sick room, whilst at the same moment a message came up to say that the other gentlemen “might come up and be d—­d.”  The consequence was, that the three entered the room nearly together.  Great was their surprise, however—­at least of two of them their disgust, their abhorrence, on seeing, as they approached his bed-room, a female—­Young certainly, and handsome—­wrapped in a night-dress—­her naked feet slippered, her nice flushed and her gait tottering, escaping, as it were, out of it.

On passing them, which it was necessary she should do, she did not seem ashamed, but turned her eyes on them with an expression of maudlin resentment, that distorted her handsome but besotted features into something that was calculated to shock those who looked upon her.  There she passed, a licentious homily upon an ill-spent life—­upon a life of open, steady, and undeviating profligacy; there she passed the meretricious angel of his death-bed, actually chased by the presence of men from the delirious depravity of his dying pollutions!

“There is no necessity, gentlemen,” said Val, “for my making an apology for this shocking sight—­you all know the life, in this respect, that my unfortunate father led.”

     * This, like most other scenes in the present work, is no
     fiction.

“In any case it is unprecedented,” replied one of them; “but if he be so near death, as we apprehend, it is utterly unaccountable—­it is awful.”  They then entered.