y the hand, and shook it slowly in his own cold, damp grasp as he
asked, with the same intense and forbidding look,

'Is Mr. Lowe in the house still?'

'He is, himself and Doctor Toole, in the back parlour.'

'Whisper him, Katty, this minute, there's a man has a thing to tell
him.'

'What about?' enquired Katty.

'About a great malefactor.'

Katty paused, with her mouth open, expecting more.

'Tell him now; at once, woman; you don't know what delay may cost.'

He spoke impetuously, and with a bitter sort of emphasis, like a man in
a hurry to commit himself to a course, distrusting his own resolution.

She was frightened at his sudden fierceness, and drew back into the hall
and he with her, and he shut the door with a clang behind him, and then
looked before him, stunned and wild, like a man called up from his bed
into danger.

'Thank God. I'm in for it,' muttered he, with a shudder and a sardonic
grin, and he looked for a moment something like that fine image of the
Wandering Jew, given us by Gustave Doree, the talisman of his curse
dissolved, and he smiling cynically in the terrible light of the
judgment day.

The woman knocked at the parlour door, and Lowe opened it.

'Who's here?' he asked, looking at Irons, whose face he remembered,
though he forgot to whom it belonged.

'I'm Zekiel Irons, the parish-clerk, please your worship, and all I want
is ten minutes alone with your honour.'

'For what purpose?' demanded the magistrate, eyeing him sharply.

'To tell you all about a damned murder.'

'Hey--why--who did it?'

'Charles Archer,' he answered; and screwed up his mouth with a
convulsive grimace, glaring bloodlessly at the justice.

'Ha! Charles Archer! I think we know something already about that.'

'I don't think you do, though; and by your leave, you'll promise, if I
bring it home to him, you'll see me safe through it. 'Tis what I'm the
only witness living that knows all about it.'

'Well, what is it about?'

'The murder of Mr. Beauclerc, that my Lord Dunoran was tried and found
guilty for.'

'Why, all very good; but that did not happen in Ireland.'

'No. At Newmarket, the "Pied Horse."'

'Ay, in England. I know, and that's out of our jurisdiction.'

'I don't care. I'll go to London if you like--to
Bow-street--anywhere--so as I make sure to hang him; for my life is
worse than death while he's at this side of the grave--and I'd rather be
in my coffin--I would--than live within five mi