‘Mind that, Larry,’ says the doctor, with
a sudden inspiration addressing the waiter, who had
peeped in; ’he admits that them two documents
you see there, is forgeries, backed up with false affidavits;
you heard him say so, and I’ll call you to prove
it.’
‘You lie!’ said Dirty Davy, precipitately,
for he was quite disconcerted at finding his own sophistical
weapons so unexpectedly turned against him.
‘You scum o’ the airth!’ cried Toole,
hitting him, with his clenched fist, right upon the
nose, so vigorous a thump, that his erudite head with
a sonorous crash hopped off the wainscot behind it;
’you lying scullion!’ roared the doctor,
instantaneously repeating the blow, and down went
Davy, and down went the table with dreadful din, and
the incensed doctor bestrode his prostrate foe with
clenched fists and flaming face, and his grand wig
all awry, and he panting and scowling.
‘Murdher, murdher, murdher!’ screamed
Dirty Davy, who was not much of a Spartan, and relished
nothing of an assault and battery but the costs and
damages.
‘Murdher—help—help—murdher—murdher!’
’Say it again, you cowardly, sneaking, spying
viper; say it again, can’t you?’
It was a fine tableau, and a noble study of countenance
and attitude.
‘Sich a bloody nose I never seen before,’
grinned Larry rubbing his hands over the exquisite
remembrance. ’If you only seed him, flat
on his back, the great ould shnake, wid his knees
and his hands up bawling murdher; an’ his big
white face and his bloody nose in the middle, like
nothin’ in nature, bedad, but the ace iv hearts
in a dirty pack.’
How they were separated, and who the particular persons
that interposed, what restoratives were resorted to,
how the feature looked half an hour afterwards, and
what was the subsequent demeanour of Doctor Toole,
upon the field of battle, I am not instructed; my
letters stop short at the catastrophe, and run off
to other matters.
Doctor Toole’s agitations upon such encounters
did not last long. They blew off in a few thundering
claps of bravado and defiance in the second parlour
of the Phoenix, where he washed his hands and readjusted
his wig and ruffles, and strutted forth, squaring
his elbows, and nodding and winking at the sympathising
waiters in the inn hall; and with a half grin at Larry—
‘Well, Larry, I think I showed him Chapelizod,
hey?’ said the doctor, buoyantly, to that functionary,
and marched diagonally across the broad street toward
Sturk’s house, with a gait and a countenance
that might have overawed an army.
WHAT DOCTOR STURK BROUGHT TO MIND, AND ALL THAT DOCTOR
TOOLE HEARD AT MR. LUKE GAMBLE’S.
Just as he reached Sturk’s door, wagging his
head and strutting grimly—and, palpably,
still in debate with Dirty Davy—his thoughts
received a sudden wrench in a different direction by
the arrival of Mr. Justice Lowe, who pulled up his
famous gray hunter at the steps of the house by the
church-yard.
