cting some refreshment, and looking upon the
captain with a serene complacency very provoking under the
circumstances.

'How the devil people can like such misshapen, idiotic-looking, selfish,
useless brutes; and, by George, it smells like a polecat--curse it! but
some people have deuced queer fancies in more matters than one. The
brute! on my soul, I'd like to shoot it.'

However, with plenty of disputation over the items, and many oaths and
vows, the gallant captain, with a heavy and wrathful heart, paid the
bill; and although he had sworn in his drawing-room that he'd eat the
pelican before Aunt Rebecca should have it, he thought better also upon
this point too, and it arrived that evening at Belmont, with his
respectful compliments.

Cluffe was soon of opinion that he was in absolute possession of his own
secret, and resolved to keep it effectually. He hinted that very evening
at mess, and afterwards at the club, that he had been managing a very
nice and delicate bit of diplomacy which not a soul of them suspected,
at Belmont; and that by George, he thought they'd stare when they heard
it. He had worked like a lord chancellor to bring it about; and he
thought all was pretty well settled, now. And the Chapelizod folk, in
general, and Puddock, as implicitly as any, and Aunt Rebecca, for that
matter, also believed to their dying day that Cluffe had managed that
match, and been a true friend to little Puddock.

Cluffe never married, but grew confoundedly corpulent by degrees, and
suffered plaguily from gout; but was always well dressed, and
courageously buckled in, and, I dare say, two inches less in girth,
thanks to the application of mechanics, than nature would have presented
him.

CHAPTER XCVIII.

IN WHICH CHARLES ARCHER PUTS HIMSELF UPON THE COUNTRY.

The excitement was high in Chapelizod when the news reached that a true
bill was found against Charles Archer for the murder of Barnabas Sturk.
Everywhere, indeed, the case was watched with uncommon interest; and
when the decisive day arrived, and the old judge, furrowed, yellow, and
cross, mounted the bench, and the jury were called over, and the
challenges began, and the grim, gentlemanlike person with the white
hair, and his right arm in a black silk sling, whispering to his
attorney and now and again pencilling, with his left hand, a line to his
counsel with that indescribable air of confidence and almost defiance,
pleaded to the indictment 'not g