there."

Paddy Burns's words did prove true; and old Clinker was with him when he
gave a quake the earth had nothing to do with, it being entirely of an
apoplectic nature; but he got the thousand pounds nevertheless.

"For once in your life, Burns, I agree with ye; and if that military mon
went to shoot grouse with me in the Hielands, I'd tramp behind him, and
keep both barrels of me gun cocked. The devil take his black wig and his
green eyes! and he passing himsel' aff for a Scot, too! Tut, mon!"

"By the way, Clinker," said Piron, during a pause in the conversation,
"if the colonel is not going with us, I must take him back his
magnificent snuff-box he forgot when he left us so suddenly the other
morning. Here it is, with the letters of his name on it in brilliants. I
thought it too valuable to send by one of the blacks, and I kept it to
carry myself."

How singular it was that the colonel should have forgotten his royal
treasure! Keep your wits about you, Captain Brand, or one of these days
you'll be forgetting your pistols.

"Given to him by a connection of his family, was it, Paddy? Weel, mon,
let's take a peench for the honor of Sackveel Street, and then push it
along to Meester Darcantel."

The doctor was sitting in his calm, grave way, listening to the
disjointed words--like dry nuts dropping on the ground--from the
shriveled lips of Clinker; but as he abstractedly put his fingers in the
box, and turned his eyes languidly as he pushed down the lid, he gave a
bound from his chair--with the box clutched in his left hand--giving a
jar to the room and table that even made Clinker believe the forty-year
earthquake had come before its time.

Standing there, with his tall, majestic figure, like a statue of bronze,
his right arm poised with clenched hand aloft in a threatening attitude,
his dark, grizzled locks bristling above his head, the black eyes
flaming with an inhuman light, as if prepared to crush, with the power
of a god, the pigmies around him, he said, in a deep low voice, which
made the glasses ring and shudder,

"Who owns this bawble?"

"It belongs to a Colonel Lawton who has been staying here!" exclaimed
Piron, quickly and hurriedly.

"What sort of man?" came again from those terrible lungs, without
relaxing a muscle of his frame.

"A square-built, tallish fellow, of about feefty, with greenish-blue
eyes, a black wig, and a glorious sapphire ring on the only finger of
his left hand!" roared