nd they'll have it they saw
him last night.'

'Pish! Sir--'tis all conceit and vapours--women's fancies--a plague o'
them all. And where's poor Mrs. Nutter?' said Gamble, clapping on his
cocked-hat, and taking his cane, and stuffing two or three bundles of
law papers into his coat pockets.

'At home--at the Mills. She slept at the village and so missed the
ghost. The Macnamaras have been mighty kind. But when the news was told
her this morning, poor thing, she would not stay, and went home; and
there she is, poor little soul, breaking her heart.'

Mr. Gamble was not ceremonious; so he just threw a cursory and anxious
glance round the room, clapped his hands on his coat pockets, making a
bunch of keys ring somewhere deep in their caverns. And all being
right--

'Come along, gentlemen,' says he, 'I'm going to lock the door;' and
without looking behind him, he bolted forth abstractedly into his dusty
ante-room.

'Get your cloak about you, Sir--remember your _cough_, you know--the air
of the streets is sharp,' said he with a sly wink, to his ugly client,
who hastily took the hint.

'Is that _coach_ at the door?' bawled Gamble to his clerks in the next
room, while he locked the door of his own snuggery behind him; and being
satisfied it was so, he conducted the party out by a side door, avoiding
the clerks' room, and so down stairs.

'Drive to the courts,' said the attorney to the coachman; and that was
all Toole learned about it that day. So he mounted his nag, and resumed
his journey to Ringsend at a brisk trot.

I suppose, when he turned the key in his door, and dropped it into his
breeches' pocket, the gentleman attorney assumed that he had made
everything perfectly safe in his private chamber, though Toole thought
he had not looked quite the same again after that sudden change of
countenance he had remarked.

Now, it was a darksome day, and the windows of Mr. Gamble's room were so
obscured with cobwebs, dust, and dirt, that even on a sunny day they
boasted no more than a dim religious light. But on this day a cheerful
man would have asked for a pair of candles, to dissipate the twilight
and sustain his spirits.

He had not been gone, and the room empty ten minutes, when the door
through which he had seemed to look on that unknown something that
dismayed him, opened softly--at first a little--then a little more--then
came a knock at it--then it opened more, and the dark shape of Charles
Nutter, with rigid f