e to see this done, as family affairs
made it necessary; 'twas as well to use the event--and they did it
without difficulty. I do not know how the obituary announcement got
into the newspapers--it was not my doing--and naming him as the evidence
in the prosecution of my Lord Dunoran was a great risk, and challenged
contradiction, but none came. Sir Philip Drayton was one of the
signatures, and it satisfied the attorney.

'When I came to Chapelizod, though, I soon found that the devil had not
done with me, and that I was like to have some more unpleasant work on
my hands. I did not know that Irons was above ground, nor he either that
I was living. We had wandered far enough asunder in the interval to make
the chances very many we should never meet again. Yet here we met, and I
knew him, and he me. But he's a nervous man, and whimsical.

'He was afraid of me, and never used his secret to force money from me.
Still it was not pleasant. I did not know but that if I went away he
might tell it. I weighed the matter; 'tis true I thought there might
have come a necessity to deal with him; but I would not engage in
anything of the sort, without an absolute necessity. But Doctor Sturk
was different--a bull-headed, conceited fool. I thought I remembered his
face at Newmarket, and changed as it was, I was right, and learned all
about him from Irons. I saw his mind was at work on me, though he could
not find me out, and I could not well know what course a man like that
might take, or how much he might have seen or remembered. That was not
pleasant either.

'I had taken a whim to marry; there's no need to mention names; but I
supposed I should have met no difficulty with the lady--relying on my
wealth. Had I married, I should have left the country.

'However, it was not to be. It might have been well for all had I never
thought of it. For I'm a man who, when he once places an object before
him, will not give it up without trying. I can wait as well as strike,
and know what's to be got by one and t'other. Well, what I've once
proposed to myself I don't forego, and that helped to hold me where I
was.

'The nature of the beast, Sturk, and his circumstances were dangerous.
'Twas necessary for my safety to make away with him. I tried it by
several ways. I made a quarrel between him and Toole, but somehow it
never came to a duel; and a worse one between him and Nutter, but that
too failed to come to a fight. It was to be, Sir, and my