And he cursed him with laconic intensity.  Then Nutter slapped his pockets, like a man feeling if his keys and other portable chattels are all right before he leaves his home.  But his countenance was that of one whose mind is absent and wandering.  And he looked down on the ground, as it seemed in profound and troubled abstraction; and, after a while, he looked up again, and again glared on the cold pistols that hung before him—­ready for anything.  And he took down one with a snatch and weighed it in his hand, and fell to thinking again; and, as he did, kept opening and shutting the pan with a snap, and so for a long time, and thinking deeply to the tune of that castanet, and at last he roused himself, who knows from what dreams, and hung up the weapon again by its fellow, and looked about him.

The hall-door lay open, as Mary Matchwell had left it.  Nutter stood on the door-step, where he could hear faintly, from above stairs, the cries and wails of poor, hysterical Mrs. Nutter.  He remained there a good while, during which, unperceived by him, Dr. Toole’s pestle-and-mortar-boy, who had entered by the back-way, had taken a seat in the hall.  He was waiting for an empty draught-bottle, in exchange for a replenished flask of the same agreeable beverage, which he had just delivered; for physic was one of poor Mrs. Nutter’s weaknesses, though, happily, she did not swallow half what came home for her.

When Nutter turned round, the boy—­a sharp, tattling vagabond, he knew him well—­was reading a printed card he had picked up from the floor, with the impress of Nutter’s hob-nailed tread upon it.  It was endorsed upon the back, ’For Mrs. Macnamara, with the humble duty of her obedient servant, M. M.’

‘What’s that, Sirrah?’ shouted Nutter.

‘For Mrs. Nutter, I think, Sir,’ said the urchin, jumping up with a start.

‘Mrs. Nutter,’ repeated he—­’No—­Mrs. Mac—­Macnamara,’ and he thrust it into his surtout pocket.  ‘And what brings you here, Sirrah?’ he added savagely; for he thought everybody was spying after him now, and, as I said, he knew him for a tattling young dog—­he had taken the infection from his master, who had trained him.

‘Here, woman,’ he cried to Moggy, who was passing again, ’give that pimping rascal his ——­ answer; and see, Sirrah, if I find you sneaking about the place again, I’ll lay that whip across your back.’

Nutter went into the small room again.

‘An’ how are ye, Jemmie—­how’s every inch iv you?’ enquired Moggy of the boy, when his agitation was a little blown over.

‘I’m elegant, thank ye,’ he answered; ‘an’ what’s the matther wid ye all?  I cum through the kitchen, and seen no one.’

‘Och! didn’t you hear?  The poor mistress—­she’s as bad as bad can be.’  And then began a whispered confidence, broken short by Nutter’s again emerging, with the leather belt he wore at night on, and a short back-sword, called a coutteau de chasse, therein, and a heavy walking-cane in his hand.