And so pale little Mrs. Sturk stole out of the room, as her lord with bitter mutterings pitched his treasure of bad bills back again into the escritoire: and she heard him slam the study door and run down stairs to browbeat and curse the men in the hall, for he had lost his head somewhat, between panic and fury. He was in his stockings and slippers, with an old flowered silk dressing-gown, and nothing more but his shirt, and looked, they said, like a madman. One of the fellows was smoking, and Sturk snatched the pipe from his mouth, and stamped it to atoms on the floor, roaring at them to know what the ---- brought them there; and without a pause for an answer, thundered, 'And I suppose you'll not let me take my box of instruments out of the house--mind, it's worth fifty pounds; and curse me, if one of our men dies for want of them in hospital, I'll indict you both, and your employer along with you, _for murder!_' And so he railed on, till his voice failed him with a sort of choking, and there was a humming in his ears, and a sort of numbness in his head, and he thought he was going to have a fit; and then up the stairs he went again, and into his study, and resolved to have Nutter out--and it flashed upon him that he'd say, 'Pay the rent first;' and then--what next? why he'd post him all over Dublin, and Chapelizod, and Leixlip, where the Lord Lieutenant and Court were. And down he sat to a sheet of paper, with his left hand clenched on the table, and his teeth grinding together, as he ransacked his vocabulary for befitting terms; but alas, his right hand shook so that his penmanship would not do, in fact, it half frightened him. 'By my soul! I believe something bad has happened me,' he muttered, and popped up his window, and looked out, half dreaming over the church-yard on the park beyond, and the dewy overhanging hill, all pleasantly lighted up in the morning sun. While this was going on, little Mrs. Sturk, who on critical occasions took strong resolutions promptly, made a wonderfully rapid toilet, and let herself quietly out of the street door. She had thought of Dr. Walsingham; but Sturk had lately, in one of his imperious freaks of temper, withdrawn his children from the good doctor's catechetical class, and sent him besides, one of his sturdy, impertinent notes--and the poor little woman concluded there was no chance there. She knew little of the rector--of the profound humility and entire placability of that noble soul.