ped in; 'he admits that them two
documents you see there, is forgeries, backed up with false affidavits;
you heard him say so, and I'll call you to prove it.'

'_You lie!_' said Dirty Davy, precipitately, for he was quite
disconcerted at finding his own sophistical weapons so unexpectedly
turned against him.

'You scum o' the airth!' cried Toole, hitting him, with his clenched
fist, right upon the nose, so vigorous a thump, that his erudite head
with a sonorous crash hopped off the wainscot behind it; 'you lying
scullion!' roared the doctor, instantaneously repeating the blow, and
down went Davy, and down went the table with dreadful din, and the
incensed doctor bestrode his prostrate foe with clenched fists and
flaming face, and his grand wig all awry, and he panting and scowling.

'Murdher, murdher, _murdher!_' screamed Dirty Davy, who was not much of
a Spartan, and relished nothing of an assault and battery but the costs
and damages.

'You--you--you'

'Murdher--help--help--murdher--murdher!'

'Say it again, you cowardly, sneaking, spying viper; say it _again_,
can't you?'

It was a fine tableau, and a noble study of countenance and attitude.

'Sich a bloody nose I never seen before,' grinned Larry rubbing his
hands over the exquisite remembrance. 'If you only seed him, flat on his
back, the great ould shnake, wid his knees and his hands up bawling
murdher; an' his big white face and his bloody nose in the middle, like
nothin' in nature, bedad, but the ace iv hearts in a dirty pack.'

How they were separated, and who the particular persons that interposed,
what restoratives were resorted to, how the feature looked half an hour
afterwards, and what was the subsequent demeanour of Doctor Toole, upon
the field of battle, I am not instructed; my letters stop short at the
catastrophe, and run off to other matters.

Doctor Toole's agitations upon such encounters did not last long. They
blew off in a few thundering claps of bravado and defiance in the second
parlour of the Phoenix, where he washed his hands and readjusted his
wig and ruffles, and strutted forth, squaring his elbows, and nodding
and winking at the sympathising waiters in the inn hall; and with a half
grin at Larry--

'Well, Larry, I think I showed him Chapelizod, hey?' said the doctor,
buoyantly, to that functionary, and marched diagonally across the broad
street toward Sturk's house, with a gait and a countenance that might
have overawed an arm