‘Mind that, Larry,’ says the doctor, with a sudden inspiration addressing the waiter, who had peeped in; ’he admits that them two documents you see there, is forgeries, backed up with false affidavits; you heard him say so, and I’ll call you to prove it.’

‘You lie!’ said Dirty Davy, precipitately, for he was quite disconcerted at finding his own sophistical weapons so unexpectedly turned against him.

‘You scum o’ the airth!’ cried Toole, hitting him, with his clenched fist, right upon the nose, so vigorous a thump, that his erudite head with a sonorous crash hopped off the wainscot behind it; ’you lying scullion!’ roared the doctor, instantaneously repeating the blow, and down went Davy, and down went the table with dreadful din, and the incensed doctor bestrode his prostrate foe with clenched fists and flaming face, and his grand wig all awry, and he panting and scowling.

‘Murdher, murdher, murdher!’ screamed Dirty Davy, who was not much of a Spartan, and relished nothing of an assault and battery but the costs and damages.

‘You—­you—­you’

‘Murdher—­help—­help—­murdher—­murdher!’

’Say it again, you cowardly, sneaking, spying viper; say it again, can’t you?’

It was a fine tableau, and a noble study of countenance and attitude.

‘Sich a bloody nose I never seen before,’ grinned Larry rubbing his hands over the exquisite remembrance.  ’If you only seed him, flat on his back, the great ould shnake, wid his knees and his hands up bawling murdher; an’ his big white face and his bloody nose in the middle, like nothin’ in nature, bedad, but the ace iv hearts in a dirty pack.’

How they were separated, and who the particular persons that interposed, what restoratives were resorted to, how the feature looked half an hour afterwards, and what was the subsequent demeanour of Doctor Toole, upon the field of battle, I am not instructed; my letters stop short at the catastrophe, and run off to other matters.

Doctor Toole’s agitations upon such encounters did not last long.  They blew off in a few thundering claps of bravado and defiance in the second parlour of the Phoenix, where he washed his hands and readjusted his wig and ruffles, and strutted forth, squaring his elbows, and nodding and winking at the sympathising waiters in the inn hall; and with a half grin at Larry—­

‘Well, Larry, I think I showed him Chapelizod, hey?’ said the doctor, buoyantly, to that functionary, and marched diagonally across the broad street toward Sturk’s house, with a gait and a countenance that might have overawed an army.

CHAPTER XCIV.

WHAT DOCTOR STURK BROUGHT TO MIND, AND ALL THAT DOCTOR TOOLE HEARD AT MR. LUKE GAMBLE’S.

Just as he reached Sturk’s door, wagging his head and strutting grimly—­and, palpably, still in debate with Dirty Davy—­his thoughts received a sudden wrench in a different direction by the arrival of Mr. Justice Lowe, who pulled up his famous gray hunter at the steps of the house by the church-yard.