d the door
and clapped it to as if he had gone out, but remained at the same time
in the inside.

"No, sir," replied Sol Donnel, ignorant of the trick which Barney had
played upon him, "I never allow a third person to be present at any of
those conversations about the strength and power of my herbs. Now, tell
me, what it is that you want me to do for you."

"Why, to tell you the truth," replied Greatrakes, "I never heard of your
name until within a few days ago, that you were mentioned to me by Mr.
Henry Woodward, who told me that you gave him a dose to settle a dog
that was laboring under the first symptoms of hydrophobia. Well, the dog
is dead by the influence of the bottle you gave him; but now that we
are by ourselves I tell you at once that I want a dose for a man who is
likely, if he lives, to cut me out of a large property."

"O, Cheernah!" exclaimed the old villain, "do you think that I who lives
by curin' the poor for nothing, or next to nothing, could lend myself to
sich a thing as that?"

"Very well," replied the other, preparing to take his departure, "you
have lost fifty pounds by the affair at all events."

"Fifty pounds!" exclaimed the other, whilst his keen and diabolical eyes
gleamed with the united spirit of avarice and villany. "Fifty pounds!
well how simple and foolish some people are. Why now, if you had a dog,
say a setter or a pointer, that from fear of madness you wished to get
rid of, and that you had mentioned it to me, I could give you a bottle
that would soon settle it; I don't go above a dog or the inferior
animals, and no man that has his senses about him ought to ask me to do
anything else."

"Well, then, I tell you at once that, as I said, it is not for a dog,
but for a worse animal, a man, my own cousin, who, unless I absolutely
contrive to poison him, will deprive me of six thousand a year. Instead
of fifty I shall make the recompense a hundred, after having found that
your medicine is successful."

The old villain's eye gleamed again at the prospect of such liberality.

"Well now," said he, "see what it is for a pious man to forget his
devotions, even for one day. I forgot to say my Leadan Wurrah this
mornin', and that is the raison that your temptation has overcome me.
You must call then to-morrow night, because I have nothing now, barrin'
what 'ud excite the bowels, and it seems that isn't what you want; but
if you be down here about this same hour to-morrow night, you shall