“Yes, my Lady,” muttered the sleeper, but in a voice every syllable of which was audible, “eighty-six years have crept to your feet, to utter this last wish and die. It is the last request of one that has already left the things of this world, and would carry from it nothing but the thought that will track him to the grave!” A burst of grief, too sudden and too natural to admit of a doubt of its sincerity, followed the words; and O'Reilly was about to enter the room, when a low dry laugh arrested his steps, and the old man said,-- “Ay! Bob Hickman, did n't I tell you that would do? I knew she 'd cry, and I told you, if she cried one tear, the day was ours!” There was something so horrible in the baseness of a mind thus revelling in its own duplicity, that even Nalty seemed struck with dread. O'Reilly saw what was passing in the other's mind, and, affecting to laugh at these “effects of fatigue and exhaustion,” half led, half pushed him from the room, and said “Good-night.” CHAPTER XXIV. THE DOCTOR'S LAST DEVICE. “Tell Mister Bob--Mr. O'Reilly I mean--to come to me,” were the first words of old Dr. Hickman, as he awoke on the following morning. “Well, sir, how have you slept?” said his son, approaching the bedside, and taking a chair; “have you rested well?” “Middling,-only middling, Bob. The place is like a vault, and the rats have it all their own way. They were capering about the whole night, and made such a noise trying to steal off with one of my shoes.” “Did they venture that far?” “Ay, did they! but I couldn't let it go with them. I know you 're in a hurry to stand in them yourself, Bob, and leave me and the rats to settle it between us--ay!” “Really, sir, these are jests---” “Too like earnest to be funny, Bob; so I feel them myself. Ugh! ugh! The damp of this place is freezing the very heart's blood of me. How is Nalty this morning?” “Like a fellow taken off a wreck, sir, after a week's starvation. He is sitting at the fire there, with two blankets round him, and vows to heaven, every five minutes, that if he was once back in Old Dominick Street, a thousand guineas would n't tempt him to such another expedition.” The old doctor laughed till it made him cough, and when the fit was over, laughed again, wiping his weeping eyes, and chuckling in the most unearthly glee at the lawyer's discomfiture. “Wrapped up in blankets, eh, Bob?” said he, that he might hear further of his fellow-traveller's misery. O'Reilly saw that he had touched the right key, and expatiated for some minutes upon Nalty's sufferings, throwing out, from time to time, adroit hints that only certain strong and hale constitutions could endure privations like these. “Now, you, sir,” continued he, “you look as much yourself as ever; in fact, I half doubt how you are to play the sick man, with all these signs of rude health about you.”