’If you’ll only listen, Sir, I’ll show you your case is well enough.  Mr. Dangerfield, as you call him, has not left the country; and though he’s arrested, ’tisn’t for debt.  If he owes you the money, ’tis your own fault if you don’t make him pay it, for I’m credibly informed he’s worth more than a hundred thousand pounds.’

‘And where is he, Sir?’ demanded Black Dillon, much more cheerfully and amicably.  ‘I hope I see you well, Doctor Toole.’

That learned person acknowledged the somewhat tardy courtesy, and Lowe made answer: 

’He lies in the county gaol, Sir, on a serious criminal charge; but a line from me, Sir, will, I think, gain you admission to him forthwith.’

‘I’ll be much obliged for it, Sir,’ answered Dillon.  ’What o’clock is it?’ he asked of Toole; for though it is believed he owned a watch, it was sometimes not about him; and while Lowe scribbled a note, Toole asked in a dignified way—­

‘Have you seen our patient, Sir?’

’Not I. Didn’t I see him last night?  The man’s dead.  He’s in the last stage of exhaustion with an inflammatory pulse.  If you feed him up he’ll die of inflammation; and if you don’t he’ll die of wakeness.  So he lies on the fatal horns of a dilemma, you see; an’ not all the men in Derry’ll take him off them alive.  He’s gone, Sir.  Pell’s coming, I hear.  I’d wait if I could; but I must look afther business; and there’s no good to be done here.  I thank you, Mr. Lowe—­Sir—­your most obedient servant, Doctor Toole.’  And with Lowe’s note in his breeches’ pocket, he strode out to the steps, and whistled for his coachman, who drove his respectable employer tipsily to his destination.

I dare say the interview was characteristic; but I can find no account of it.  I am pretty sure, however, that he did not get a shilling.  So at least he stated in his declaration, in the action against Lowe, in which he, or rather his attorney, was nonsuited, with grievous loss of costs.  And judging by the sort of esteem in which Mr. Dangerfield held Black Dillon, I fancy that few things would have pleased him better in his unfortunate situation than hitting that able practitioner as hard as might be.

Just as he drove away, poor little Mrs. Sturk looked in.

‘Is there anything, Ma’am?’ asked Toole, a little uneasily.

’Only—­only, I think he’s just a little frightened—­he’s so nervous you know—­by that Dublin doctor’s loud talking—­and he’s got a kind of trembling—­a shivering.’

‘Eh—­a shivering, Ma’am?’ said Toole.  ’Like a man that’s taken a cold, eh?’

’Oh, he hasn’t got cold—­I’m sure—­there’s no danger of that.  It’s only nervous; so I covered him up with another pair of blankets, and gave him a hot drink.’

‘Very good, Ma’am; I’ll follow you up in a minute.’

’And even if it was, you know he shakes off cold in no time, he has such a fine constitution.’

‘Yes, Ma’am—­that’s true—­very good, Ma’am.  I’ll be after you.’