‘By your leave, Mistress Katty,’ said he, laying his hand on the iron rail of the door-steps.

‘Oh, good jewel! an’ is that yourself, Mr. Irons?  And where in the world wor you this month an’ more?’

‘Business—­nothin’—­in Mullingar—­an’ how’s the docthor to-night?’

The clerk spoke a little thickly, as he commonly did on leaving the Salmon House.

‘He’s elegant, my dear—­beyant the beyants—­why, he’s sittin’ up, dhrinking chicken-broth, and talking law-business with Mr. Lowe.’

‘He’s talkin’!’

’Ay is he, and Mr. Lowe just this minute writ down all about the way he come by the breakin’ of his skull in the park, and we’ll have great doings on the head of it; for the master swore to it, and Doctor Toole——­’

‘An’who done it?’ demanded Irons, ascending a step, and grasping the iron rail.

‘I couldn’t hear—­nor no one, only themselves.’

‘An’ who’s that rode down the Dublin road this minute?’

’That’s Mr. Lowe’s man; ‘tis what he’s sent him to Dublin wid a note.’

‘I see,’ said Irons, with a great oath, which seemed to the maid wholly uncalled for; and he came up another step, and held the iron rail and shook it, like a man grasping a battle-axe, and stared straight at her, with a look so strange, and a visage so black, that she was half-frightened.

‘A what’s the matther wid you, Misther Irons?’ she demanded.

But he stared on in silence, scowling through her face at vacancy, and swaying slightly as he griped the metal banister.

‘I will,’ he muttered, with another most unclerklike oath, and he took Katty by the hand, and shook it slowly in his own cold, damp grasp as he asked, with the same intense and forbidding look,

‘Is Mr. Lowe in the house still?’

‘He is, himself and Doctor Toole, in the back parlour.’

’Whisper him, Katty, this minute, there’s a man has a thing to tell him.’

‘What about?’ enquired Katty.

‘About a great malefactor.’

Katty paused, with her mouth open, expecting more.

‘Tell him now; at once, woman; you don’t know what delay may cost.’

He spoke impetuously, and with a bitter sort of emphasis, like a man in a hurry to commit himself to a course, distrusting his own resolution.

She was frightened at his sudden fierceness, and drew back into the hall and he with her, and he shut the door with a clang behind him, and then looked before him, stunned and wild, like a man called up from his bed into danger.

‘Thank God.  I’m in for it,’ muttered he, with a shudder and a sardonic grin, and he looked for a moment something like that fine image of the Wandering Jew, given us by Gustave Doree, the talisman of his curse dissolved, and he smiling cynically in the terrible light of the judgment day.

The woman knocked at the parlour door, and Lowe opened it.