‘Drowned! who says so?’ repeated the colonel.

‘Cluffe—­everybody.’

‘Why, there it is!’ replied the colonel, with a great oath, breaking through all his customary reserve and stiffness, and flinging his cocked-hat on the middle of the table, piteously, ’A fellow that can’t swim a yard will go by way of saving a great—­a large gentleman, like Captain Cluffe, from drowning, and he’s pulled in himself; and so—­bless my soul! what’s to be done?’

So the colonel broke into a lamentation, and a fury, and a wonder.  ’Cluffe and Puddock, the two steadiest officers in the corps!  He had a devilish good mind to put Cluffe under arrest—­the idiots—­Puddock—­he was devilish sorry.  There wasn’t a more honourable’—­et cetera.  In fact, a very angry and pathetic funeral oration, during which, accompanied by Doctor Toole, Lieutenant Puddock, in person, entered; and the colonel stopped short with his eyes and mouth very wide open, and said the colonel very sternly.

’I—­I’m glad to see, Sir, you’re safe:  and—­and—­I suppose, I shall hear now that Cluffe’s drowned?’ and he stamped the emphasis on the floor.

While all this was going on, some of the soldiers had actually got into Dublin.  The tide was in, and the water very high at ‘Bloody Bridge.’  A hat, near the corner, was whisking round and round, always trying to get under the arch, and always, when on the point, twirled round again into the corner—­an image of the ‘Flying Dutchman’ and hope deferred.  A watchman’s crozier hooked the giddy thing.  It was not a military hat; but they brought it back, and the captive was laid in the guard-room—­mentioned by me because we’ve seen that identical hat before.

CHAPTER LI.

HOW CHARLES NUTTER’S TEA, PIPE, AND TOBACCO-BOX WERE ALL SET OUT FOR HIM IN THE SMALL PARLOUR AT THE MILLS; AND HOW THAT NIGHT WAS PASSED IN THE HOUSE BY THE CHURCH-YARD.

Mrs. Nutter and Mrs. Sturk, the wives of the two men who most hated one another within the vicinage of Chapelizod—­natural enemies, holding aloof one from another, and each regarding the other in a puzzled way, with a sort of apprehension and horror, as the familiar of that worst and most formidable of men—­her husband—­were this night stricken with a common fear and sorrow.

Darkness descended on the Mills and the river—­a darkness deepened by the umbrageous trees that grouped about the old gray house in which poor Mrs. Nutter lay so ill at ease.  Moggy carried the jingling tray of tea-things into Nutter’s little study, and lighted his candles, and set the silver snuffers in the dish, and thought she heard him coming, and ran back again, and returned with the singing ‘tea-kitchen,’ and then away again, for the thin buttered toast under its china cover, which our ancestors loved.

Then she listened—­but ’twas a mistake—­it was the Widow Macan’s step, who carried the ten pailfuls of water up from the river to fill the butt in the backyard every Tuesday and Friday, for a shilling a week, and ’a cup o’ tay with the girls in the kitchen.’