‘Yes,’ said he to himself, pausing for a minute, with his pen in his fingers, ‘’tis as certain as that I sit here.’

Well, he wrote the note.  There was a kind of smile on his face, which was paler than usual all the while; and he read it over, and threw himself back in his chair, and then read it over again, and did not like it, and tore it up.

Then he thought hard for a while, leaning upon his elbow; and took a couple of great pinches of snuff, and snuffed his candle again, and, as it were, snuffed his wits, and took up his pen with a little flourish, and dashed off another, and read it, and liked it, and gave it a little sidelong nod, as though he said, ‘You’ll do;’ and, indeed, considering all the time and thought he spent upon it, the composition was no great wonder, being, after all, no more than this:—­

’DEAR SIR,—­Will you give me the honour of a meeting at
my house this morning, as you pass through the town?  I shall
remain within till noon; and hope for some minutes’ private discourse
with you. 
’Your most obedient, very humble servant,
‘BARNABAS STURK.’

Then he sealed it with a great red seal, large enough for a patent almost, impressed with the Sturk arms—­a boar’s head for crest, and a flaunting scroll, with ‘Dentem fulmineum cave’ upon it.  Then he peeped again from the window to see if the gray of the morning had come, for he had left his watch under his bolster, and longed for the time of action.

Then up stairs went Sturk; and so, with the note, like a loaded pistol, over the chimney, he popped into bed, where he lay awake in agitating rumination, determined to believe that he had seen the last of those awful phantoms—­those greasy bailiffs—­that smooth, smirking, formidable attorney; and—­curse him—­that bilious marshal’s deputy, with the purplish, pimply tinge about the end of his nose and the tops of his cheeks, that beset his bed in a moving ring—­this one pushing out a writ, and that rumpling open a parchment deed, and the other fumbling with his keys, and extending his open palm for the garnish.  Avaunt.  He had found out a charm to rout them all, and they sha’n’t now lay a finger on him—­a short and sharp way to clear himself; and so I believe he had.

CHAPTER XLV.

CONCERNING A LITTLE REHEARSAL IN CAPTAIN CLUFFE’S, LODGING, AND A CERTAIN CONFIDENCE BETWEEN DR. STURK AND MR. DANGERFIELD.

Mrs. Sturk, though very quiet, was an active little body, with a gentle, anxious face.  She was up and about very early, and ran down to the King’s House, to ask Mrs. Colonel Stafford, who was very kind to her, and a patroness of Sturk’s, to execute a little commission for her in Dublin, as she understood she was going into town that day, and the doctor’s horse had gone lame, and was in the hands of the farrier.  So the good lady undertook it, and offered a seat in her carriage to Dr. Sturk, should his business call him to town.  The carriage would be at the door at half-past eleven.