“Yes, sir. It was describin' how Watty Carew enticed him downstairs, to kill him. Faix, but there's murder now goin' on upstairs; do ye hear ould Joe, how he's cursin' and swearin'?”
The uproar was assuredly enough to attract attention; for Curtis was heard screaming something at the top of his voice, and as if in high altercation with his visitor. Mac-Naghten accordingly sprang from his seat, and hurried up the stairs at once, followed by the powerful-looking fellow I have already mentioned. As he came near Curtis's chamber, however, the sounds died away and nothing could be heard but the low voices of persons conversing in ordinary tones together.
“Step in here, sir,” said the fellow to Dan, unlocking a door at the back of the house; “step in here, and I'll tell you when Mister Joe is ready to see you.”
MacNaghten accepted the offer, and now found himself in a mean-looking chamber, scantily furnished, and looking out upon some of those miserable lanes and alleys with which the place abounded. The man retired, locking the door after him, and leaving Dan to his own meditations in solitude.
He was not destined to follow these thoughts long undisturbed, for again he could hear Curtis's voice, which, at first from a distant room, was now to be heard quite close, as he came into the very chamber adjoining that where Dan was.
“Come this way, come this way, I say,” cried the old man, in a voice tremulous with passion. “If you want to seize, you shall see the chattels at once,—no need to trouble yourself about an inventory! There is my bed; I got fresh straw into the sacking on Saturday. The blanket is a borrowed one; that horseman's cloak is my own. There 's not much in that portmanteau,” cried he, kicking it with his foot against the wall. “Two ragged shirts and a lambskin waistcoat, and the title-deeds of estates that not even your chicanery could get back for me. Take them all, take that old blunderbuss, and tell the Grinder that if I 'd have put it to my head twenty years ago, it would have been mercy, compared to the slow torture of his persecution!”
“My dear Mr. Curtis, my dear sir,” interposed a bland, soft voice that Dan at once recognized as belonging to Mr. Crowther, the attorney, “you must allow me once more to protest against this misunderstanding. There is nothing farther from my thoughts at this moment than any measure of rigor or severity towards you.”
“What do you mean, then, by that long catalogue of my debts? Why have you hunted me out to show me bills I can never pay, and bonds I can never release?”
“Pray be calm, sir; bear with me patiently, and you will see that my business here this morning is the very reverse of what you suspect it to be. It is perfectly true that Mr. Fagan possesses large, very large, claims upon you.”
“How incurred, sir?—answer me that. Who can stand forty, fifty, ay, sixty per cent? Has he not succeeded to every acre of my estate? Have I anything, except that settle-bed, that is n't his?”