Just then out came Sergeant Bligh, with his men—­two of them carrying a bier with a mattress and cloaks thereupon.  They formed, and accompanied by the adjutant, at quick step marched through the town for the park.  Mr. Lowe accompanied them, and in the park-lane they picked up the ubiquitous Doctor Toole, who joined the party.

Dangerfield walked a while beside the adjutant’s horse; and, said he—­

’I’ve had as much walking as I can well manage this morning, and you don’t want for hands, so I’ll turn back when I’ve said just a word in your ear.  You know, Sir, funerals are expensive, and I happen to know that poor Sturk was rather pressed for money—­in fact, ’twas only the day before yesterday I myself lent him a trifle.  So will you, through whatever channel you think best, let poor Mrs. Sturk know that she may draw upon me for a hundred pounds, if she requires it?’

‘Thank you, Mr. Dangerfield; I certainly shall.’

And so Dangerfield lifted his hat to the party and fell behind, and came to a stand still, watching them till they disappeared over the brow of the hill.

When he reached his little parlour in the Brass Castle, luncheon was upon the table.  But he had not much of an appetite, and stood at the window, looking upon the river with his hands in his pockets, and a strange pallid smile over his face, mingling with the light of the silver spectacles.

‘When Irons hears of this,’ he said, ’he’ll come to my estimate of Charles Archer, and conclude he has had a finger in that pretty pie; ‘twill frighten him.’

And somehow Dangerfield looked a little bit queer himself, and he drank off two small glasses, such as folks then used in Ireland—­of Nantz; and setting down the glass, he mused—­

’A queer battle life is; ha, ha!  Sturk laid low—­the wretched fool!  Widow—­yes; children—­ay.  Charles!  Charles! if there be a reckoning after death, your score’s an ugly one.  I’m tired of playing my part in this weary game of defence.  Irons and I remain with the secret between us.  Glasscock had his fourth of it, and tasted death.  Then we three had it; and Sturk goes next; and now I and Irons—­Irons and I—­which goes first?’ And he fell to whistling slowly and dismally, with his hands in his breeches’ pockets, looking vacantly through his spectacles on the ever-running water, an emblem of the eternal change and monotony of life.

In the meantime the party, with Tim Brian, the bare-shanked urchin, still in a pale perspiration, for guide, marched on, all looking ahead, in suspense, and talking little.

On they marched, till they got into the bosky shadow of the close old whitethorn and brambles, and there, in a lonely nook, the small birds hopping on the twigs above, sure enough, on his back, in his regimentals, lay the clay-coloured image of Sturk, some blood, nearly black now, at the corners of his mouth, and under his stern brows a streak of white eye-ball turned up to the sky.