However, with plenty of disputation over the items, and many oaths and vows, the gallant captain, with a heavy and wrathful heart, paid the bill; and although he had sworn in his drawing-room that he’d eat the pelican before Aunt Rebecca should have it, he thought better also upon this point too, and it arrived that evening at Belmont, with his respectful compliments.

Cluffe was soon of opinion that he was in absolute possession of his own secret, and resolved to keep it effectually.  He hinted that very evening at mess, and afterwards at the club, that he had been managing a very nice and delicate bit of diplomacy which not a soul of them suspected, at Belmont; and that by George, he thought they’d stare when they heard it.  He had worked like a lord chancellor to bring it about; and he thought all was pretty well settled, now.  And the Chapelizod folk, in general, and Puddock, as implicitly as any, and Aunt Rebecca, for that matter, also believed to their dying day that Cluffe had managed that match, and been a true friend to little Puddock.

Cluffe never married, but grew confoundedly corpulent by degrees, and suffered plaguily from gout; but was always well dressed, and courageously buckled in, and, I dare say, two inches less in girth, thanks to the application of mechanics, than nature would have presented him.

CHAPTER XCVIII.

IN WHICH CHARLES ARCHER PUTS HIMSELF UPON THE COUNTRY.

The excitement was high in Chapelizod when the news reached that a true bill was found against Charles Archer for the murder of Barnabas Sturk.  Everywhere, indeed, the case was watched with uncommon interest; and when the decisive day arrived, and the old judge, furrowed, yellow, and cross, mounted the bench, and the jury were called over, and the challenges began, and the grim, gentlemanlike person with the white hair, and his right arm in a black silk sling, whispering to his attorney and now and again pencilling, with his left hand, a line to his counsel with that indescribable air of confidence and almost defiance, pleaded to the indictment ‘not guilty,’ and the dreadful business of the day began, the court was crowded as it seldom had been before.

A short, clear, horrible statement unfolded the case for the crown.  Then the dying deposition of Sturk was put in evidence; then Irons the clerk was put up, and told his tale doggedly and distinctly, and was not to be shaken.  ’No, it was not true that he had ever been confined in a mad house.’  ‘He had never had delirium tremens.’  ’He had never heard that his wife thought him mad.’  ’Yes, it was true he had pledged silver of his master’s at the Pied Horse at Newmarket’ ’He knew it was a felony, but it was the prisoner who put it into his head and encouraged him to do it.’  ‘Yes, he would swear to that.’  ’He had several times spoken to Lord Dunoran, when passing under the name of Mervyn, on the subject of his father being wronged.’  ’He never had any promise from my lord, in case he should fix the guilt of that murder on some other than his father.’  Our friend, Captain Cluffe, was called, and delivered his evidence in a somewhat bluff and peremptory, but on the whole effective way.