Poor Father Roach was hard-up just then.  Indeed, the being hard-up was a chronic affection with him.  Two horses were not to be kept for nothing.  Nor for the same moderate figure was it possible to maintain an asylum for unfortunates and outlaws—­pleasant fellows enough, but endowed with great appetites and an unquenchable taste for consolation in fluid forms.

A clerical provision in Father Roach’s day, and church, was not by any means what we have seen it since.  At all events he was not often troubled with the possession of money, and when half-a-dozen good weddings brought him in fifty or a hundred pounds, the holy man was constrained forthwith to make distribution of his assets among a score of sour, and sometimes dangerous tradespeople.  I mention this in no disparagement of Father Roach, quite the contrary.  In making the tender of his two guineas—­which, however, Sally declined—­the worthy cleric was offering the widow’s mite; not like some lucky dogs who might throw away a thousand or two and be nothing the worse; and you may be sure the poor fellow was very glad to find she did not want it.

‘Rather hard measure, it strikes me,’ said Dangerfield, in the club, ’to put him in the Hue-and-Cry.’

But there he was, sure enough, ’Charles Nutter, Esq., formerly of the Mills, near Knockmaroon, in the county of Dublin;’ and a full description of the dress he wore, as well as of his height, complexion, features—­and all this his poor little wife, still inhabiting the Mills, and quite unconscious that any man, woman, or child, who could prosecute him to conviction, for a murderous assault on Dr. Sturk, should have L50 reward.

‘News in to-day, by Jove,’ said Toole, bustling solemnly into the club; ’by the packet that arrived at one o’clock, a man taken, answering Nutter’s description exactly, just going aboard of a Jamaica brig at Gravesend, and giving no account of himself.  He’s to be sent over to Dublin for identification.’

And when that was thoroughly discussed two or three times over, they fell to talking of other subjects, and among the rest of Devereux, and wondered what his plans were; and, there being no brother officers by, whether he meant to keep his commission, and various speculations as to the exact cause of the coldness shown him by General Chattesworth.  Dick Spaight thought it might be that he had not asked Miss Gertrude in marriage.

But this was pooh-poohed.  ‘Besides, they knew at Belmont,’ said Toole, who was an authority upon the domestic politics of that family, and rather proud of being so, ’just as well as I did that Gipsy Dick was in love with Miss Lilias; and I lay you fifty he’d marry her to-morrow if she’d have him.’

Toole was always a little bit more intimate with people behind their backs, so he called Devereux ‘Gipsy Dick.’

‘She’s ailing, I hear,’ said old Slowe.

‘She is, indeed, Sir,’ answered the doctor, with a grave shake of the head.