and Dublin a matter of from
five days to nearly as many weeks, and compute how much easier it was
then than now for an adventurous highwayman, an absconding debtor, or a
pair of fugitive lovers, to make good their retreat. Slow, undoubtedly,
was the flight--they did not run, they walked away; but so was pursuit,
and altogether, without authentic lights and official helps--a matter of
post-chaises and perplexity, cross-roads and rumour, foundering in a
wild waste of conjecture, or swallowed in the quag of some country
inn-yard, where nothing was to be heard, and out of which there would be
no relay of posters to pull you until nine o'clock next morning.

As Toole debouched from Martin's-row, on his return, into the
comparative amplitude of the main street of Chapelizod, he glanced
curiously up to Sturk's bed-room windows. There were none of the white
signals of death there. So he ascended the door step, and paid a
visit--of curiosity, I must say--and looked on the snorting image of his
old foe, and the bandaged head, spell-bound and dreamless, that had
machinated so much busy mischief against his own medical sovereignty and
the rural administration of Nutter.

As Toole touched his pulse, and saw him swallow a spoonful of chicken
broth, and parried poor Mrs. Sturk's eager quivering pleadings for his
life with kind though cautious evasions, he rightly judged that the
figure that lay there was more than half in the land of ghosts
already--that the enchanter who met him in the Butcher's Wood, and whose
wand had traced those parallel indentures in his skull, had not only
exorcised for ever the unquiet spirit of intrigue, but wound up the tale
of his days. It was true that he was never more to step from that bed,
and that his little children would, ere many days, be brought there by
kindly, horror-loving maids, to look their last on 'the poor master,'
and kiss awfully his cold stern mouth before the coffin lid was screwed
down, and the white-robed image of their father hidden away for ever
from their sight.

CHAPTER LVIII.

IN WHICH ONE OF LITTLE BOPEEP'S SHEEP COMES HOME AGAIN, AND VARIOUS
THEORIES ARE ENTERTAINED RESPECTING CHARLES NUTTER AND LIEUTENANT
PUDDOCK.

And just on Monday morning, in the midst of this hurly-burly of
conjecture, who should arrive, of all the people in the world, and
re-establish himself in his old quarters, but Dick Devereux. The gallant
captain was more splendid and handsome than ever