nce; and Toole's active little mind, having
just made a note of this, tripped off smartly to half-a-dozen totally
different topics, and he was mentally tippling his honest share of a
dozen of claret, with a pleasant little masonic party at the
Salmon-leap, on Sunday next, and was just going to charm them with his
best song, and a new verse of his own compounding, when Sturk, in a
moment, dispersed the masons, and brought him back by the ear at a jump
from the Salmon-leap, with a savage----

'And I'd like to know, Sir, who the deuce, or, rather, what
the ----(_plague_ we'll say) could put into your head, Sir, to suppose any
such matter?'

But this was only one of Sturk's explosions, and he and little Toole
parted no better and no worse friends than usual, in ten minutes more at
the latter's door-step.

So Toole said to Mrs. T. that evening----

'Sturk owes money, mark my words, sweetheart. Remember _I_ say it--he'll
cool his heels in a prison, if he's no wiser than of late, before a
twel'month. Since the beginning of February he has lost--just wait a
minute, and let me see--ay, that, L150 by the levanting of old Tom
Farthingale; and, I had it to-day from little O'Leary, who had it from
Jim Kelly, old Craddock's conducting clerk, he's bit to the tune of
three hundred more by the failure of Larkin, Brothers, and Hoolaghan.
You see a little bit of usury under the rose is all very well for a
vulgar dog like Sturk, if he knows the town, and how to go about it; but
hang, it, he knows nothing. Why, the turnpike-man, over the way, would
not have taken old Jos. Farthingale's bill for fippence--no, nor his
bond neither; and he's stupid beside--but he can't help that, the
hound!--and he'll owe a whole year's rent only six weeks hence, and he
has not a shilling to bless himself with. Unfortunate devil--I've no
reason to like him--but, truly, I do pity him.'

Saying which Tom Toole, with his back to the fire, and a look of concern
thrown into his comic little mug, and his eyebrows raised, experienced a
very pleasurable glow of commiseration.

Sturk, on the contrary, was more than commonly silent and savage that
evening, and sat in his drawing-room, with his fists in his breeches'
pockets, and his heels stretched out, lurid and threatening, in a gloomy
and highly electric state. Mrs. S. did not venture her usual 'would my
Barney like a dish of tea?' but plied her worsted and knitting-needles
with mild concentration, sometimes p