les of him. Anyway,
you'll hear what I have to say, and to _swear_, and send me safe across
the water to Bow-street, or wherever else you think best; for, if he has
his liberty, and gets sight o' me again, I'm a dead man.'

'Come in here, Mr. Irons, and take a chair,' said the justice.

Doctor Toole was in the room, in a balloon-backed chair, regaling
himself with a long pipe, and Mr. Lowe shut the door.

'We have another deposition, doctor, to take; Mr. Irons, here, is
prepared to swear informations of very singular importance.'

'Irons, hollo! from what planet did you drop to-night?'

'Mullingar, Sir.'

'Nothing about the burning of the old woman at Tyrrell's Pass, eh?'

'No--'tis an old story. I don't care what comes of it, I'm innocent,
only you'll say I kept it too long to myself. But you can't touch my
life. I'm more afeard of him than you, and with good cause; but I think
he's in a corner now, and I'll speak out and take my chance, and you
mustn't allow me to be murdered.'

By this time Lowe had procured writing materials, and all being ready,
he and the curious and astonished doctor heard a story very like what we
have already heard from the same lips.

CHAPTER XC.

MR. PAUL DANGERFIELD HAS SOMETHING ON HIS MIND, AND CAPTAIN DEVEREUX
RECEIVES A MESSAGE.

Mr. Dangerfield having parted with Irons, entered the little garden or
shrubbery, which skirted on either side the short gravel walk, which
expanded to a miniature court-yard before the door of the Brass Castle.
He flung the little iron gate to with a bitter clang; so violent that
the latch sprang from its hold, and the screaking iron swung quivering
open again behind him.

Like other men who have little religion, Mr. Paul Dangerfield had a sort
of vague superstition. He was impressible by omens, though he scorned
his own weakness, and sneered at, and quizzed it sometimes in the
monologues of his ugly solitude. The swinging open of the outer gate of
his castle sounded uncomfortably behind him, like an invitation to
shapeless danger to step in after him. The further he left it behind
him, the more in his spirit was the gaping void between his two little
piers associated with the idea of exposure, defencelessness, and
rashness. This feeling grew so strong, that he turned about before he
reached his hall-door, and, with a sensation akin to fury, retraced the
fifteen or twenty steps that intervened, and grasped the cold iron with
the fiercest