the apartment. Almost at
the same instant she was followed by an ill-looking fellow, buttoned up
in a surtout, whose stature seemed enormous, and at sight of whom the
two women shrieked as if soul and body were parting.

The lady was now quite in the room, and standing upright showed the tall
shape and stern lineaments of Mary Matchwell. And as she stood she
laughed a sort of shuddering laugh, like a person who had just had a
plunge in cold water.

'Stop that noise,' said she, recognising Betty, who saw her with
unspeakable terror. 'I'm the lady that came here, you know, some months
ago, with Mrs. Macnamara; and I'm Mrs. Nutter, which the woman up stairs
_is not_. I'm Mrs. Nutter, and _you're my_ servants, do ye mind? and
I'll act a fair mistress by you, if you do me honest service. Open the
hall-door,' she said to the man, who was by this time also in the room.
And forth he went to do her bidding, and a gentleman, who turned out to
be that respectable pillar of the law whom Mr. Gamble in the morning had
referred to as 'Dirty Davy,' entered. He was followed by Mrs. Mary
Matchwell's maid, a giggling, cat-like gipsy, with a lot of gaudy finery
about her, and a withered, devilment leering in her face; and a
hackney-coach drove up to the door, which had conveyed the party from
town; and the driver railing in loud tones, after the manner of his kind
in old times, at all things, reeking of whiskey and stale tobacco, and
cursing freely, pitched in several trunks, one after the other; and, in
fact, it became perfectly clear that M. M. was taking possession. And
Betty and Moggy, at their wits' end between terror and bewilderment,
were altogether powerless to resist, and could only whimper a protest
against the monstrous invasion, while poor little Sally Nutter up
stairs, roused by the wild chorus of strange voices from the lethargy of
her grief, and even spurred into active alarm, locked her door, and then
hammered with a chair upon the floor, under a maniacal hallucination
that she was calling I know not what or whom to the rescue.

Then Dirty Davy read aloud, with due emphasis, to the maids, copies, as
he stated, of the affidavits sworn to that day by Mistress Mary
Matchwell, or as he called her, Mrs. Nutter, relict of the late Charles
Nutter, gentleman, of the Mills, in the parish of Chapelizod, barony of
Castleknock, and county of Dublin, deposing to her marriage with the
said Charles Nutter having been celebrated in the C