There was an inquest.  Mr. Dangerfield ‘looked very composed in death,’ says an old letter, and he lay ‘very like sleep,’ in his bed, ’his fingers under his cheek and temple,’ with the countenance turned ’a little downward, as if looking upon something on the floor,’ with an ‘ironical smile;’ so that the ineffaceable lines of sarcasm, I suppose, were traceable upon that jaundiced mask.

Some said it was a heart disease, and others an exhalation from the prison floor.  He was dead, that was all the jury could say for certain, and they found ’twas ‘by a visitation of God.’  The gaoler, being a superstitious fellow, was plaguily nervous about Mr. Dangerfield’s valediction, and took clerical advice upon it, and for several months after became a very serious and ascetic character; and I do believe that the words were spoken in reality with that sinister jocularity in which his wit sported like church-yard meteors, when crimes and horrors were most in his mind.

The niece of this gaoler said she well remembered her uncle, when a very old man, three years before the rebellion, relating that Mr. Dangerfield came by his death in consequence of some charcoal in a warming pan he had prevailed on him to allow him for his bed, he having complained of cold.  He got it with a design to make away with himself, and it was forgotten in the room.  He placed it under the bed, and waited until the first call of the turnkey was over, and then he stuffed his surtout into the flue of the small fire-place, which afforded the only ventilation of his cell, and so was smothered.  It was not till the winter following that the gaoler discovered, on lighting a fire there, that the chimney was stopped.  He had a misgiving about the charcoal before, and now he was certain.  Of course, he said nothing about his suspicions at first, nor of his discovery afterwards.

So, sometimes in my musings, when I hear of clever young fellows taking to wild courses, and audaciously rushing—­where good Christians pray they may not be led—­into temptation, there rises before me, with towering forehead and scoffing face, a white image smoking his pipe grimly by a plutonic fire; and I remember the words of the son of Sirach—­’The knowledge of wickedness is not wisdom, neither at any time the counsel of sinners prudence.’

Mr. Irons, of course, left Chapelizod.  He took with him the hundred guineas which Mr. Dangerfield had given him, as also, it was said, a handsome addition made to that fund by open-handed Dr. Walsingham; but somehow, being much pressed for time, he forgot good Mistress Irons, who remained behind and let lodgings pretty much as usual, and never heard from that time forth anything very distinct about him; and latterly it was thought was, on the whole, afraid rather than desirous of his turning up again.

Doctor Toole, indeed, related in his own fashion, at the Phoenix, some years later, a rumour which, however, may have turned out to be no better than smoke.