You can imagine how Sally Nutter received all this, with clasped hands and streaming eyes, looking in the face of the man of notices and attested copies, unable to speak—­unable quite to believe.  But before he came to the end of his dry and delightful narrative, a loud yell and a scuffle in the parlour were heard; a shrilly clamour of warring voices; a dreadful crash of glass:  a few curses and oaths in basses and barytones; and some laughter from the coachmen, who viewed the fray from outside through the window; and a brief, wild, and garrulous uproar, which made little Sally Nutter—­though by this time used to commotion—­draw back with her hands to her heart, and hold her breath.  It was the critical convulsion; the evil spirit was being eliminated, and the tenement, stunned, bruised, and tattered, about to be at peace.

Of Charles Nutter’s doings and adventures during the terrible interval between his departure on the night of Mary Matchwell’s first visit to the Mills, and his return on this evening to the same abode, there is a brief outline, in the first person, partly in answer to questions, and obviously intended to constitute a memorandum for his attorney’s use.  I shall reprint it with your leave—­as it is not very long—­verbatim.

‘When that woman, Sir, came out to the Mills,’ says this document, ’I could scarce believe my eyes; I knew her temper; she was always damnably wicked; but I had found out all about her long ago; and I was amazed at her audacity.  What she said was true—­we were married; or rather, we went through the ceremony, at St. Clement Danes, in London, in the year ’50.  I could not gainsay that; but I well knew what she thought was known but to herself and another.  She had a husband living then.  We lived together little more than three months.  We were not a year parted when I found out all about him; and I never expected more trouble from her.

’I knew all about him then.  But seventeen years bring many changes; and I feared he might be dead.  He was a saddler in Edinburgh, and his name was Duncan.  I made up my mind to go thither straight.  Next morning the Lovely Betty, packet, was to sail for Holyhead.  I took money, and set out without a word to anybody.  The wretch had told my poor wife, and showed her the certificate, and so left her half mad.

’I swore to her ’twas false.  I told her to wait a bit and she would see.  That was everything passed between us.  I don’t think she half understood what I said, for she was at her wits’ ends.  I was scarce better myself first.  ’Twas a good while before I resolved on this course, and saw my way, and worse thoughts were in my head; but so soon as I made up my mind to this I grew cool.  I don’t know how it happened that my foot-prints by the river puzzled them; ’twas all accident; I was thinking of no such matter; I did not go through the village, but through the Knockmaroon gate; ’twas dark by that time; I only met two men with a cart—­they did not know me—­Dublin men, I think.  I crossed the park in a straight line for Dublin; I did not meet a living soul; ’twas dark, but not very dark.  When I reached the Butcher’s Wood, all on a sudden, I heard a horrid screech, and two blows quick, one after the other, to my right, not three score steps away—­heavy blows—­they sounded like the strokes of a man beating a carpet.