The result was, however, that their prisoner was to be first tried in Ireland for the murder of Doctor Barnabas Sturk.

A few pieces of evidence, slight, but sinister, also turned up.  Captain Cluffe was quite clear he had seen an instrument in the prisoner’s hand on the night of the murder, as he looked into the little bed-chamber of the Brass Castle, so unexpectedly.  When he put down the towel, he raised it from the toilet, where it lay.  It resembled the butt of a whip—­was an inch or so longer than a drumstick, and six or seven inches of the thick end stood out in a series of circular bands or rings.  He washed the thick end of it in the basin; it seemed to have a spring in it, and Cluffe thought it was a sort of loaded baton.  In those days robbery and assault were as common as they are like to become again, and there was nothing remarkable in the possession of such defensive weapons.  Dangerfield had only run it once or twice hastily through the water, rolled it in a red handkerchief, and threw it into his drawer, which he locked.  When Cluffe was shown the whip, which bore a rude resemblance to this instrument, and which Lowe had assumed to be all that Cluffe had really seen, the gallant captain peremptorily pooh-poohed it.  ’Twas no such thing.  The whip-handle was light in comparison, and it was too long to fit in the drawer.

Now, the awful fractures which had almost severed Sturk’s skull corresponded exactly with the wounds which such an instrument would inflict, and a tubular piece of broken iron, about two inches long, exactly corresponding with the shape of the loading described by Cluffe, was actually discovered in the sewer of the Brass Castle.  It had been in the fire, and the wood or whalebone was burnt completely away.  It was conjectured that Dangerfield had believed it to be lead, and having burnt the handle, had broken the metal which he could not melt, and made away with it in the best way he could.  So preparations were pushed forward, and Sturk’s dying declaration, sworn to, late in the evening before his dissolution, in a full consciousness of his approaching death, was, of course, relied on, and a very symmetrical and logical bill lay, neatly penned, in the Crown Office, awaiting the next commission for the county.

CHAPTER XCVII.

IN WHICH OBEDIAH ARRIVES.

In the meantime our worthy little Lieutenant Puddock—­by this time quite reconciled to the new state of things, walked up to Belmont, with his head a great deal fuller—­such and so great are human vagaries—­of the interview pending between him and Aunt Becky than of the little romance which had exploded so unexpectedly about a fortnight ago.

He actually saw Miss Gertrude and my Lord Dunoran walking side by side, on the mulberry walk by the river; and though he looked and felt a little queer, perhaps, a little absurd, he did not sigh, or murmur a stanza, or suffer a palpitation; but walked up to the hall-door, and asked for Miss Rebecca Chattesworth.