''Tis a sorry business, gentlemen,' he said in a stern, subdued tone. 'Seven children and a widow. He's not dead yet, though: whatever Toole might do, the Dublin doctor would not stay with a dead man; time's precious. I can't describe how I pity that poor soul, his wife--what's to become of her and her helpless brood I know not.' Slowe grunted a dismal assent, and the major, with a dolorous gaze, blew a thin stream of tobacco-smoke into the night air, which floated off like the ghost of a sigh towards the glimmering window of Sturk's bed-room. So they all grew silent. It seemed they had no more to say, and that, in their minds, the dark curtain had come down upon the drama of which the 'noble Barney,' as poor Mrs. Sturk called him, was hero. CHAPTER LV. IN WHICH DR. TOOLE, IN FULL COSTUME, STANDS UPON THE HEARTH-STONE OF THE CLUB, AND ILLUMINATES THE COMPANY WITH HIS BACK TO THE FIRE. Two or three minutes later, the hall-door of Sturk's mansion opened wide, and the figure of the renowned doctor from Dublin, lighted up with a candle from behind, and with the link from before, glided swiftly down the steps, and disappeared into the coach with a sharp clang of the door. Up jumps the footman, and gives his link a great whirl about his head. The maid stands on the step with her hand before the flaring candle. 'The Turk's Head, in Werburgh Street,' shouts the footman, and smack goes the coachman's whip, and the clang and rattle begin. 'That's Alderman Blunkett--he's dying,' said the major, by way of gloss on the footman's text; and away went the carriage with thundering wheels, and trailing sparks behind it, as if the wild huntsman had furnished its fleet and shadowy team. 'He has ten guineas in his pocket for that--a guinea a minute, by Jove, coining, no less,' said the major, whose pipe was out, and he thinking of going in to replenish it. 'We'll have Toole here presently, depend upon it.' He had hardly spoken when Toole, in a halo of candle-light, emerged from Sturk's hall-door. With one foot on the steps, the doctor paused to give a parting direction about chicken-broth and white-wine whey. These last injunctions on the door-steps had begun, perhaps in a willingness to let folk see and even hear that the visit was professional; and along with the lowering and awfully serious countenance with which they were delivered, had grown into a habit, so that, as now, he practised them even in solitude and darkness.