were put to death.' And so
he went on, sustaining his position with strange narratives culled here
and there from the wilderness of his reading.

Among the congregation that heard this sermon, at the eccentricities of
which I have hinted, but which had, beside, much that was striking,
simply pathetic, and even awful in it, there glided--shall I say--a
phantom, with the light of death, and the shadows of hell, and the
taint of the grave upon him, and sat among these respectable persons of
flesh and blood--impenetrable--secure--for he knew there were but two in
the church for whom clever disguises were idle and transparent as the
air. The blue-chinned sly clerk, who read the responses, and quavered
the Psalms so demurely, and the white-headed, silver-spectacled, upright
man, in my Lord Castlemallard's pew, who turned over the leaves of his
prayer-book so diligently, saw him as he was, and knew him to be Charles
Archer, and one of these at least, as this dreadful spirit walked, with
his light burning in the noon-day, dogged by inexorable shadows through
a desolate world, in search of peace, he knew to be the slave of his
lamp.

CHAPTER LVII.

IN WHICH DR. TOOLE AND MR. LOWE MAKE A VISIT AT THE MILLS, AND RECOGNISE
SOMETHING REMARKABLE WHILE THERE.

After church, Dr. Toole walking up to the Mills, to pay an afternoon
visit to poor little Mrs. Nutter, was overtaken by Mr. Lowe, the
magistrate who brought his tall, iron-gray hunter to a walk as he
reached him.

'Any tidings of Nutter?' asked he, after they had, in the old world
phrase, given one another the time of day.

'Not a word,' said the doctor; 'I don't know what to make of it; but you
know what's thought. The last place he was seen in was his own garden.
The river was plaguy swollen Friday night, and just where he stood it's
deep enough, I can tell you; often I bathed there when I was a boy. He
was consumedly in the dumps, poor fellow; and between ourselves, he was
a resolute dog, and atrabilious, and just the fellow to make the jump
into kingdom-come if the maggot bit: and you know his hat was fished out
of the river a long way down. They dragged next morning,
but--pish!--'twas all nonsense and moonshine; why, there was water
enough to carry him to Ringsend in an hour. He was a good deal out of
sorts, as I said, latterly--a shabby design, Sir, to thrust him out of
my Lord Castlemallard's agency; but that's past and gone; and, besides,
I have reason to