‘He is in a profound lethargy,’ said the worthy divine. ’’Tis a subsidence—­his life, Sir, stealing away like the fluid from the clepsydra—­less and less left every hour—­a little time will measure all out.’

‘What the plague’s a clepsydra?’ asked Cluffe of Toole, as they walked side by side into the club-room.

’Ho! pooh! one of those fabulous tumours of the epidermis mentioned by Pliny, you know, exploded ten centuries ago—­ha, ha, ha!’ and he winked and laughed derisively, and said, ‘Sure you know Doctor Walsingham.’

And the gentlemen began spouting their theories about the murder and Nutter, in a desultory way; for they all knew the warrant was out against him.

‘My opinion,’ said Toole, knocking out the ashes of his pipe upon the hob; for he held his tongue while smoking, and very little at any other time; ’and I’ll lay a guinea ’twill turn out as I say—­the poor fellow’s drowned himself.  Few knew Nutter—­I doubt if any one knew him as I did.  Why he did not seem to feel anything, and you’d ha’ swore nothing affected him, more than that hob, Sir; and all the time, there wasn’t a more thin-skinned, atrabilious poor dog in all Ireland—­but honest, Sir—­thorough steel, Sir.  All I say is, if he had a finger in that ugly pie, you know, as some will insist, I’ll stake my head to a china orange, ’twas a fair front to front fight.  By Jupiter, Sir, there wasn’t one drop of cur’s blood in poor Nutter.  No, poor fellow; neither sneak nor assassin there—­’

‘They thought he drowned himself from his own garden—­poor Nutter,’ said Major O’Neill.

‘Well, that he did not,’ said Toole.  ’That unlucky shoe, you know, tells a tale; but for all that, I’m clear of the opinion that drowned he is.  We tracked the step, Lowe and I, to the bank, near the horse-track, in Barrack Street, just where the water deepens—­there’s usually five feet of water there, and that night there was little short of ten.  Now, take it, that Nutter and Sturk had a tussle—­and the thing happened, you know—­and Sturk got the worst of it, and was, in fact, despatched, why, you know the kind of panic—­and—­and—­the panic—­you know—­a poor dog, finding himself so situated, would be in—­with the bitter, old quarrel between them—­d’ye see?  And this at the back of his vapours and blue-devils, for he was dumpish enough before, and would send a man like Nutter into a resolution of making away with himself; and that’s how it happened, you may safely swear.’

‘And what do you think, Mr. Dangerfield?’ asked the major.

‘Upon my life,’ said Dangerfield, briskly, lowering his newspaper to his knee, with a sharp rustle, ’these are questions I don’t like to meddle in.  Certainly, he had considerable provocation, as I happen to know; and there was no love lost—­that I know too.  But I quite agree with Doctor Toole—­if he was the man, I venture to say ’twas a fair fight.  Suppose, first, an altercation, then a hasty blow—­Sturk had his cane, and a deuced heavy one—­he wasn’t a fellow to go down without knowing the reason why; and if they find Nutter, dead or alive, I venture to say he’ll show some marks of it about him.’