‘Nothing of moment, I hope?’ he asked.

’Why, you see it may be; she had a bad cough last winter, and this year she took it earlier, and it has fallen very much on her lungs; and you see, we can’t say, Sir, what turn it may take, and I’m very sorry she should be so sick and ailing—­she’s the prettiest creature, and the best little soul; and I don’t know, on my conscience, what the poor old parson would do if anything happened her, you know.  But I trust, Sir, with care, you know, ‘twill turn out well.’

The season for trout-fishing was long past and gone, and there were no more pleasant rambles for Dangerfield and Irons along the flowery banks of the devious Liffey.  Their rods and nets hung up, awaiting the return of genial spring; and the churlish stream, abandoned to its wintry mood, darkled and roared savagely under the windows of the Brass Castle.

One dismal morning, as Dangerfield’s energetic step carried him briskly through the town, the iron gate of the church-yard, and the door of the church itself standing open, he turned in, glancing upward as he passed at Sturk’s bed-room windows, as all the neighbours did, to see whether General Death’s white banners were floating there, and his tedious siege ended—­as end it must—­and the garrison borne silently away in his custody to the prison house.

Up the aisle marched Dangerfield, not abating his pace, but with a swift and bracing clatter, like a man taking a frosty constitutional walk.

Irons was moping softly about in the neighbourhood of the reading-desk, and about to mark the places of psalms and chapters in the great church Bible and Prayer-book, and sidelong he beheld his crony of the angle marching, with a grim confidence and swiftness, up the aisle.

‘I say, where’s Martin?’ said Dangerfield, cheerfully.

‘He’s gone away, Sir.’

‘Hey! then you’ve no one with you?’

‘No, Sir.’

Dangerfield walked straight on, up the step of the communion-table, and shoving open the little balustraded door, he made a gay stride or two across the holy precinct, and with a quick right-about face, came to a halt, the white, scoffing face, for exercise never flushed it, and the cold, broad sheen of the spectacles, looked odd in the clerk’s eyes, facing the church-door, from beside the table of the sacrament, displayed, as it were, in the very frame—­foreground, background, and all—­in which he was wont to behold the thoughtful, simple, holy face of the rector.

‘Alone among the dead; and not afraid?’ croaked the white face pleasantly.

The clerk seemed always to writhe and sweat silently under the banter of his comrade of the landing-net, and he answered, without lifting his head, in a constrained and dogged sort of way, like a man who expects something unpleasant—­

‘Alone? yes, Sir, there’s none here but ourselves.’

And his face flushed, and the veins on his forehead stood out, as will happen with a man who tugs at a weight that is too much for him.