'You see, my dear Ma'am, you must keep yourself as quiet as you can, or physic's thrown away upon you; you really must,' said Toole.
'But doctor,' pleaded the poor lady, 'you don't know—I—I'm terrified—I—I—I'll never be the same again,' and she burst into hysterical crying.
'Now, really, Madam—confound it—my dear, good lady—you see—this will never do'—he was uncorking and smelling at the bottles in search of 'the drops'—'and—and—here they are—and isn't it better, Ma'am, you should be well and hearty—here drink this—when—when he comes back—don't you see—than—a—a—'
'But—oh, I wish I could tell you. She said—she said—the—the—oh, you don't know—'
'She—who? Who said what?' cried Toole, lending his ear, for he never refused a story.
'Oh! Doctor, he's gone—I'll never—never—I know I'll never see him again. Tell me he's not gone—tell me I'll see him again.'
'Hang it, can't she stick to one thing at a time—the poor woman's half out of her wits,' said Toole, provoked; 'I'll wager a dozen of claret there's more on her mind than she's told to anyone.'
Before he could bring her round to the subject again, the doctor was called down to Lowe; so he took his leave for the present; and after his talk with the magistrate, he did not care to go up again to poor little Mrs. Nutter; and Moggy was as white as ashes standing by, for Mr. Lowe had just made her swear to her little story about the shoes; and Toole walked home to the village with a heavy heart, and a good deal out of humour.
Toole knew that a warrant would be issued next day against Nutter. The case against him was black enough. Still, even supposing he had struck those trenchant blows over Sturk's head, it did not follow that it was without provocation or in cold blood. It looked, however, altogether so unpromising, that he would have been almost relieved to hear that Nutter's body had been found drowned in the river.
Still there was a chance that he made good his retreat. If he had not paid his fare in Charon's packet-boat, he might, at least, have crossed the channel in the Trevor or Hillsborough to Holyhead. Then, deuce was in it, if he did not make a fair run for it, and earth himself snugly somewhere. 'Twas lighter work then than now. 'The old saying at London, among servants,' writes that good-natured theatrical wag, Tate Wilkinson, 'was, "I wish you were at York!" which the wronged cook has now changed for, "I wish you were at Jamaica." Scotland was then imagined by the cockney as a dreary place, distant almost as the West Indies; now'(reader, pray note the marvel) 'an agreeable party may, with the utmost ease, dine early in the week in Grosvenor Square, and without discomposure set down at table on Saturday or Sunday in the new town of Edinburgh!' From which we learn that miracles of celerity were already accomplishing themselves, and that the existing generation contemplated their triumphs complacently. But even upon these we have improved, and nowadays, our whole social organisation is subservient to detection. Cut your telegraph wires, substitute sail boats for steam, and your old fair and easy forty-miles-a-day stage-coaches for the train and the rail, disband your City police and detective organisation, and make the transit of a letter between London and Dublin a matter of from five days to nearly as many weeks, and compute how much easier it was then than now for an adventurous highwayman, an absconding debtor, or a pair of fugitive lovers, to make good their retreat. Slow, undoubtedly, was the flight—they did not run, they walked away; but so was pursuit, and altogether, without authentic lights and official helps—a matter of post-chaises and perplexity, cross-roads and rumour, foundering in a wild waste of conjecture, or swallowed in the quag of some country inn-yard, where nothing was to be heard, and out of which there would be no relay of posters to pull you until nine o'clock next morning.