th colours
flying, drums beating, and ball in mouth. He paid the money down at
Nutter's table, in the small room at the Phoenix, where he sat in the
morning to receive his rents, eyeing the agent with a fixed smirk of
hate and triumph, and telling down each piece on the table with a fierce
clink that had the ring of a curse in it. Little Nutter met his stare of
suppressed fury with an eye just as steady and malign and a countenance
blackened by disappointment. Not a word was heard but Sturk's insolent
tone counting the gold at every clang on the table.

Nutter shoved him a receipt across the table, and swept the gold into
his drawer.

'Go over, Tom,' he said to the bailiff, in a stern low tone, 'and see
the men don't leave the house till the fees are paid.'

And Sturk laughed a very pleasant laugh, you may be sure, over his
shoulder at Nutter, as he went out at the door.

When he was gone Nutter stood up, and turned his face toward the empty
grate. I have seen some plain faces once or twice look so purely
spiritual, and others at times so infernal, as to acquire in their
homeliness a sort of awful grandeur; and from every feature of Nutter's
dark wooden face was projected at that moment a supernatural glare of
baffled hatred that dilated to something almost sublime.

CHAPTER XLIV.

RELATING HOW, IN THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT, A VISION CAME TO STURK, AND
HIS EYES WERE OPENED.

Sturk's triumph was only momentary. He was in ferocious spirits, indeed,
over the breakfast-table, and bolted quantities of buttered toast and
eggs, swallowed cups of tea, one after the other, almost at a single
gulp, all the time gabbling with a truculent volubility, and every now
and then a thump, which made his spoon jingle in his saucer, and poor,
little Mrs. Sturk start, and whisper, 'Oh, my dear!' But after he had
done defying and paying off the whole world, and showing his wife, and
half convincing himself, that he was the cleverest and finest fellow
alive, a letter was handed to him, which reminded him, in a dry, short
way, of those most formidable and imminent dangers that rose up,
apparently insurmountable before him; and he retired to his study to
ruminate again, and chew the cud of bitter fancy, and to write letters
and tear them to pieces, and, finally, as was his wont, after hospital
hours, to ride into Dublin, to bore his attorney with barren inventions
and hopeless schemes of extrication.

Sturk came home that night