IN WHICH MR.

PAUL DANGERFIELD MOUNTS THE STAIRS OF THE HOUSE BY THE CHURCH-YARD, AND MAKES SOME ARRANGEMENTS.
The white figure glided duskily over the bridge.

The river rushed beneath in Egyptian darkness.

The air was still, and a thousand celestial eyes twinkled down brightly through the clear deep sky upon the actors in this true story.

He kept the left side, so that the road lay between him and the Phoenix door, which gaped wide with a great hospitable grin, and crimsoned the night air with a glow of candle-light.
The white figure turned the corner, and glided onward in a straight, swift line--straight and swift as fate--to the door of Doctor Sturk.
He knocked softly at the hall-door, and swiftly stepped in and shut it.
'How's your master ?' 'Jist the same way, plaze yer honour; jist sleepin'-- still sleepin'-- sleepin' always,' answered the maid.
'Has the Dublin doctor come ?' 'No.' 'The mistress--where's she ?' 'In the room, Sir, with the masther.' 'Present my service to her--Mr.Dangerfield's compliments, you know--and say I await her permission to come up stairs.' Presently the maid returned, with poor Mrs.Sturk's invitation to Mr.
Dangerfield to walk up.
Up he went, leaving his white surtout and cocked hat in the hall, and entered the chamber where pale little Mrs.Sturk, who had been crying a great deal, sat in a dingy old tabby saque, by the light of a solitary mould-candle at the bed-side of the noble Barney.
The mutton-fat wanted snuffing; but its light danced and splintered brilliantly over Mr.Dangerfield's resplendent shoe-buckles, and up and down his cut-steel buttons, and also glimmered in a more phosphoric way upon his silver spectacles, as he bowed at the door, arrayed in a puce cut velvet coat, lined with pink, long embroidered satin waistcoat, fine lace ruffles and cravat, his well-shaped leg gleaming glossily in silk, and altogether, in his glimmering jewellery, and purple and fine linen, resembling Dives making a complimentary visit to the garret of Lazarus.
Poor little Mrs.Sturk felt her obligations mysteriously enlarged by so much magnificence, and wondered at the goodness of this white-headed angel in point, diamonds, and cut velvet, who had dropped from the upper regions upon the sad and homely floor of her Barney's sick chamber.
'Dr.Dillon not yet arrived, Madam?
Well, 'tis precisely his hour; we shall have him soon.