'
Toole nodded hurriedly; and just then the maid came out to ask him to
see her mistress.
'I say, my good woman,' said Lowe; 'just look here. Whose foot-print is
that--do you know it?'
'Oh, why, to be sure I do. Isn't it the master's brogues?' she replied,
frightened, she knew not why, after the custom of her kind.
'You observe that?' and he pointed specially to the transverse line
across the heel. 'Do you know that?'
The woman assented.
'Who made or mended these shoes?'
'Bill Heaney, the shoemaker, down in Martin's-row, there--'twas he made
them, and mended them, too, Sir.'
So he came to a perfect identification, and then an authentication of
his paper pattern; then she could say they were certainly the shoes he
wore on Friday night--in fact, every other pair he had were then on the
shoe-stand on the lobby. So Lowe entered the house, and got pen and ink,
and continued to question the maid and make little notes; and the other
maid knocked at the parlour door with a message to Toole.
Lowe urged his going; and somehow Toole thought the magistrate suspected
him of making signs to his witness, and he departed ill at ease; and at
the foot of the stairs he said to the woman--
'You had better go in there--that stupid Lynn is doing her best to hang
your master, by Jove!'
And the woman cried--
'Oh, dear, bless us!'
Toole was stunned and agitated, and so with his hand on the clumsy
banister he strode up the dark staircase, and round the little corner in
the lobby, to Mrs.
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