‘Seize ace! curse it!’ cried Cluffe, who, I’m happy to say, had taken no harm by his last night’s wetting; ‘another gammon, I’ll lay you fifty.’

‘Toole, I dare thay, will look in and tell us how poor Sturk goes on,’ said Puddock, playing his throw.

’Hang it, Puddock, mind your game—­to be sure, he will.  Cinque ace! well, curse it! the same throw over again!  ’Tis too bad.  I missed taking you last time, with that stupid blot you’ve covered—­and now, by Jove, it ruins me.  There’s no playing when fellows are getting up every minute to gape after doctors’ coaches, and leaving the door open—­hang it, I’ve lost the game by it—­gammoned twice already.  ’Tis very pleasant.  I only wish when gentlemen interrupt play, they’d be good enough to pay the bets.’

It was not much, about five shillings altogether, and little Puddock had not often a run of luck.

‘If you’d like to win it back, Captain Cluffe, I’ll give you a chance,’ said O’Flaherty, who was tolerably sober.  ’I’ll lay you an even guinea Sturk’s dead before nine to-morrow morning; and two to one he’s dead before this time to-morrow night.’

’I thank you—­no, Sir—­two doctors over him, and his head in two pieces—­you’re very obliging, lieutenant, but I’ll choose a likelier wager,’ said Cluffe.

Dangerfield, who was overlooking the party, with his back to the fire, appeared displeased at their levity—­shook his head, and was on the point of speaking one of those polite but cynical reproofs, whose irony, cold and intangible, intimidated the less potent spirits of the club-room.  But he dismissed it with a little shrug.  And a minute after, Major O’Neill and Arthur Slowe became aware that Dangerfield had glided behind them, and was looking serenely, like themselves, at the Dublin doctor’s carriage and smoking team.  The light from Sturk’s bed-room window, and the red glare of the footman’s torch, made two little trembling reflections in the silver spectacles as he stood in the shade, peering movelessly over their shoulders.

‘’Tis a sorry business, gentlemen,’ he said in a stern, subdued tone.  ’Seven children and a widow.  He’s not dead yet, though:  whatever Toole might do, the Dublin doctor would not stay with a dead man; time’s precious.  I can’t describe how I pity that poor soul, his wife—­what’s to become of her and her helpless brood I know not.’

Slowe grunted a dismal assent, and the major, with a dolorous gaze, blew a thin stream of tobacco-smoke into the night air, which floated off like the ghost of a sigh towards the glimmering window of Sturk’s bed-room.  So they all grew silent.  It seemed they had no more to say, and that, in their minds, the dark curtain had come down upon the drama of which the ‘noble Barney,’ as poor Mrs. Sturk called him, was hero.

CHAPTER LV.

IN WHICH DR. TOOLE, IN FULL COSTUME, STANDS UPON THE HEARTH-STONE OF THE CLUB, AND ILLUMINATES THE COMPANY WITH HIS BACK TO THE FIRE.