’If Mr. Dangerfield really means to stay here, he must apply for the commission of the peace,’ said Mr. Lowe, so soon as the door shut.  ’We must put it upon him.  I protest I never met a man so fitted by nature and acquirements to make a perfectly useful magistrate.  He and I, Sir, between us, we’d give a good account of this part of the county; and there’s plenty of work, Sir, if ’twere only between this and Dublin; and, by George, Sir, he’s a wonderful diverting fellow, full of anecdote.  Wonderful place London, to be sure.’

‘And a good man, too, in a quiet way,’ said Colonel Strafford, who could state a fact. ’’Tisn’t every rich man has the heart to part with his money as he does; he has done many charities here, and especially he has been most bountiful to poor Sturk’s family.’

‘I know that,’ said Lowe.

’And he sent a fifty pound note by the major there to poor Sally Nutter o’ Monday last; he’ll tell you.’

And thus it is, as the foul fiend, when he vanishes, leaves a smell of brimstone after him, a good man leaves a fragrance; and the company in the parlour enjoyed the aroma of Mr. Dangerfield’s virtues, as he buttoned his white surtout over his breast, and dropped his vails into the palms of the carbuncled butler and fuddled footman in the hall.

It was a clear, frosty, starlit night.  White and stern was the face which he turned upward for a moment to the sky.  He paused for a second in the ray of candle-light that gleamed through Puddock’s window-shutter, and glanced on the pale dial of his large gold watch.  It was only half-past eight o’clock.  He walked on, glancing back over his shoulder, along the Dublin road.

‘The drunken beast.  My mind misgives me he’ll disappoint,’ muttered the silver spectacles, gliding briskly onward.

When he reached the main street he peered curiously before him under the village tree, in quest of carriage lights.

‘A lawless brute like that may be before his time as well as after.’  So he walked briskly forward, and up Sturk’s door-steps, and knocked.

’The Dublin doctor hasn’t come, eh?’—­he asked.

‘No, Sir, he isn’t come yet—­’twas nine o’clock, the mistress told me.’

’Very good.  Tell Mrs. Sturk, pray, that I, Mr. Dangerfield, you know, will call, as I promised, at nine o’clock precisely.’

And he turned again and walked briskly over the bridge, and away along the Inchicore road overhanging the river.  All was silent there.  Not a step but his own was stirring, and the road in places so overhung with old trees that it was difficult to see a yard before one.

He slackened his pace, and listened, like a man who keeps an assignation, and listened again, and laughed under his breath; and sure enough, before long, the clink of a footstep was heard approaching swiftly from the Dublin direction.

Mr. Dangerfield drew aside under the deep shadow of a high hawthorn hedge, overhung by trees; and watching intently, he saw a tall, lank figure, with a peculiar gait and stoop of its own, glide stealthily by.  He smiled after it in the dark.