Doctor Toole came into the clerk’s room, and was ushered by one of these gentlemen through an empty chamber into the attorney’s sanctum.  Up two steps stumbled the physician, cursing the house for a place where a gentleman was so much more likely to break his neck than his fast, and found old Gamble in his velvet cap and dressing-gown, in conference with a hard-faced, pale, and pock-marked elderly man, squinting unpleasantly under a black wig, who was narrating something slowly, and with effort, like a man whose memory is labouring to give up its dead, while the attorney, with his spectacles on his nose, was making notes.  The speaker ceased abruptly, and turned his pallid visage and jealous, oblique eyes on the intruder.

Luke Gamble looked embarrassed, and shot one devilish angry glance at his clerk, and then made Doctor Toole very welcome.

When Toole had ended his narrative, and the attorney read the notices through, Mr. Gamble’s countenance brightened, and darkened and brightened again, and with a very significant look, he said to the pale, unpleasant face, pitted with small-pox—­

‘M.  M.,’ and nodded.

His companion extended his hand toward the papers.

‘Never mind,’ said the attorney; ’there’s that here will fix M. M. in a mighty tight vice.’

‘And who’s M. M., pray?’ enquired Toole.

‘When were these notices served, doctor?’ asked Mr. Gamble.

‘Not an hour ago; but, I say, who the plague’s M. M.?’ answered Toole.

‘M.  M.,’ repeated the attorney, smiling grimly on the backs of the notices which lay on the table; ’why there’s many queer things to be heard of M. M.; and the town, and the country, too, for that matter, is like to know a good deal more of her before long; and who served them—­a process-server, or who?’

’Why, a fat, broad, bull-necked rascal, with a double chin, and a great round face, the colour of a bad suet-dumplin’, and a black patch over his eye,’ answered Toole.

‘Very like—­was he alone?’ said Gamble.

’No—­a long, sly she-devil in black, that looked as if she’d cut your windpipe, like a cat in the dark, as pale as paper, and mighty large, black, hollow eyes.’

‘Ay—­that’s it,’ said Gamble, who, during this dialogue, had thrown his morning-gown over the back of the chair, and got on his coat, and opened a little press in the wall, from which he took his wig, and so completed his toilet.

‘That’s it?’ repeated Toole:  ‘what’s it?—­what’s what?’

’Why, ’tis David O’Regan—­Dirty Davy, as we call him.  I never knew him yet in an honest case; and the woman’s M. M.’

’Hey! to be sure—­a woman—­I know—­I remember; and he was on the point of breaking out with poor Mrs. Macnamara’s secret, but recovered in time.  ’That’s the she fortune-teller, the witch, M. M., Mary Matchwell; ’twas one of her printed cards, you know, was found lying in Sturk’s blood.  Dr. Sturk, you remember, that they issued a warrant for, against our poor friend, you know.’