“Pray, sir, are you the great Valentine Great Rooke, who prevents the people from dyin'?”
“I am Valentine Greatrakes,” he replied, with a smile; “but I cannot prevent the people from dying.”
“Begad, but you can prevent them from being sick, at any rate. I am myself sometimes subject to a colic, bad luck to it—(this was a lie, got up for the purpose of arresting the attention of Greatrakes)—and maybe if you would be kind enough to rub me down you would drive the wind out of me and cure me of it, for at least, by all accounts through the whole parish, it's a windy colic that haunts me.”
Greatrakes, who was a man of great goodnature, and strongly susceptible of humor, laughed very heartily at Barney's account of his miserable state of health.
“Well,” said he, “my good friend, let me tell you that the colic you speak of is one of the most healthy diseases we have. Don't, if you regard your constitution, and your health, ever attempt to get rid of it. Your constitution is a windy constitution, and that is the reason why you are graciously afflicted with a windy colic.”
It was, in fact, diamond cut diamond between the two. Barney, who had never had a colic in his life, shrugged his shoulders very dolefully at the miserable character of the sympathy which was expressed for him; and Greatrakes, from his great powers of observation, saw that every word Barney uttered with respect to his besetting malady was a lie.
At length Barney's countenance assumed an expression of such honest sincerity and feeling that Greatrakes was at once struck by it, and he kept his eye steadily fixed upon him.
“Sir,” said Barney, “I understand you are a distinguished gentleman and a magistrate besides?”
“I am certainly a magistrate,” replied Greatrakes; “but what is your object in asking the question, my good fellow?”
“I understand you are going to our Masther Charles Lindsay. Now, I wish to give you a hint or two concerning him. His brother—he of the Evil Eye—according to my most solemn and serious opinion, is poisoning him by degrees. I think he has been dosing him upon a small scale, so as to make him die off by the effects of poison, without any suspicion being raised against himself; but when his father told him yesterday that you were to come this day to cure him, his brother insisted that he should sit up with him, and nurse-tend him himself. I was aware of this, and from a conversation I heard him have with an old herbalist, named Sol Donnel, I had suspicions of his design against his brother's life. He strove to kill Miss Goodwin by the damnable force and power of his Evil Eye, and would have done so had not you cured her.”