TER LXXIV.

IN WHICH DOCTOR TOOLE, IN HIS BOOTS, VISITS MR. GAMBLE, AND SEES AN UGLY
CLIENT OF THAT GENTLEMAN'S; AND SOMETHING CROSSES AN EMPTY ROOM.

'Here's a conspiracy with a vengeance!' muttered Toole, 'if a body
could only make head or tail of it. Widow!--Eh!--We'll see: why, she's
like no woman ever _I_ saw. Mrs. Nutter, forsooth!' and he could
not forbear laughing at the conceit. 'Poor Charles! 'tis ridiculous--though
upon my life, I don't like it. It's just possible it may be all as
true as gospel--they're the most devilish looking pair I've seen
out of the dock--curse them--for many a day. I would not wonder if
they were robbers. The _widow_ looks consumedly like a man in
petticoats--hey!--devilish like. I think I'll send Moran and Brien up to
sleep to-night in the house. But, hang it! if they were, they would not
come out in the daytime to give an alarm. Hollo! Moggy, throw me out one
of them papers till I see what it's about.'

So he conned over the notice which provoked him, for he could not half
understand it, and he was very curious.

'Well, keep it safe, Moggy,' said he. 'H'm--it _does_ look like law
business, after all, and I believe it _is_. No--they're not
housebreakers, but robbers of another stamp--and a worse, I'll take my
davy.'

'See,' said he, as a thought struck him, 'throw me down both of them
papers again--there's a good girl. They ought to be looked after, I dare
say, and I'll see the poor master's attorney to-day, d'ye mind? and
we'll put our heads together--and, that's right--_relict_ indeed!'

And, with a solemn injunction to keep doors locked and windows fast, and
a nod and a wave of his hand to Mistress Moggy, and muttering half a
sentence or an oath to himself, and wearying his imagination in search
of a clue to this new perplexity, he buttoned his pocket over the legal
documents, and strutted down to the village, where his nag awaited him
saddled, and Jimmey walking him up and down before the doctor's
hall-door.

Toole was bound upon a melancholy mission that morning. But though
properly a minister of life, a doctor is also conversant with death, and
inured to the sight of familiar faces in that remarkable disguise. So he
spurred away with more coolness, though not less regret than another
man, to throw what light he could upon the subject of the inquest which
was to sit upon the body of poor Charles Nutter.

The little doctor, on his way to Ringsend, without the necessity