--A Beautiful but Cowardly Method of Destroying Female Reputation.--A
Domiciliary Visit from the Blood-hounds--Irresponsible Power
At length the hour of Mary M'Loughlin's appointment with Phil arrived,
and the poor girl found herself so completely divided between the
contending principles of love for Harman and aversion towards Phil,
that she scarcely knew the purport of her thoughts or actions. Harman's
safety, however, was the predominant idea in her soul, and in order
to effect that, or at least to leave nothing undone to effect it,
she resolved, as pure and disinterested attachment always will do--to
sacrifice her detestation for young M'Clutchy, so far as to give him an
opportunity of satisfying her that he was sincere in wishing to save her
lover. This setting aside her invincible and instinctive hatred of that
worthy gentleman, was, she thought, not at least unreasonable, and with
her mind thus regulated she accordingly awaited the appointed time. On
reaching the back of her father's garden she found that Phil had not
arrived, but somewhat to her relief she was accosted by Poll Doolin,
who approached from a clump of trees that stood in deep and impenetrable
shadow, whilst she and Poll were easily visible under the dim light of
what is called a watery and cloudy moon.
Poll, as she addressed her, spoke eagerly, and her voice trembled with
what appeared to Mary to be deep and earnest agitation.
“Miss M'Loughlin,” she exclaimed, in a low, but tremulous voice, “I now
forgive your father all--I forgive him and his--you need not forgive,
for I never bore you ill-will--but I am bound to tell you that there's
danger over your father's house and hearth this night. There is but one
can save them, and he will. You must go into your own room, raise the
window, and he will soon be there.”
“What is that, Poll,” said Mary, seriously alarmed, “I thought I heard
the sound of low voices among the trees there. Who are they, or what is
it?”
“Make haste,” said Poll, leading the way, “go round to your room and
come to the window. It's an awful business--there is people there in the
clump--be quick, and when you come to the window raise it, and I'll tell
you more through it.”
Mary, in a state of great terror, felt that ignorant as she was of the
dangers and difficulties by which she was surrounded, she had no other
alternative than to be guided by Poll, who seemed to know the full
extent of the mysterious circumstances to which she made such wild and
startling allusions.
Poll immediately proceeded to Miss M'Loughlin's bed-room, the window of
which was soon opened by Mary herself, who with trembling hands raised
it no higher than merely to allow the necessary communication between
them.
“You don't know, nor could you never suspect,” said Poll, “the struggles
that Misther Phil is makin' for you and yours. This night, maybe
this hour, will show his friendship for your family. And now, Mary
M'Loughlin, if you wish to have yourself and them safe--safe, I say,
from his own father's blood-hounds,” and this she hissed into her ear,
squeezing her hand at the same time until it became painful--in a voice
so low, earnest, and condensed, that it was scarcely in human nature to
question the woman's sincerity; “if,” she continued, “you wish to have
them safe--and Harman safe, be guided by him, and let him manage it
his own way. He will ask you to do nothing that is wrong or improper in
itself; but as you love your own family--as you value Harman's life--let
him act according to his own way, for he knows them he has to deal with
best.”
“Wo--wo--heavy and bitter betide you, Poll Doolin, if you are now
deceiving me, or prompting mo to do anything that is improper! I
will not act in this business blindfold--neither I nor my family are
conscious of evil, and I shall certainly acquaint them this moment with
the danger that is over them.”
“By the souls of the dead,” replied Poll, uttering the oath in Irish,
“if you do what you say there will be blood shed this night--the blood,
too, of the nearest and dearest to you! Do not be mad, I say, do not be
mad!”
“May God guide me?” exclaimed the distressed girl, bursting into tears;
“for of myself I know not how to act.”
“Be guided by Mr. Phil,” said she; “he is the only man living that can
prevent the damnable work that is designed against your family this
night.”
She had scarcely uttered the words when Phil came breathless to the
window, and, as if moved by a sense of alarm, and an apprehension of
danger still greater than that expressed by Poll herself, he exclaimed--
“Miss M'Loughlin, it's no time for ceremony--my father's blood-hounds
are at your father's door; and there is but one way of saving your
family from violence and outrage. Excuse me--but I must pass in by this
window. You don't know what I risk by it; but for your sake and theirs
it must be done.”
Even as he spake, the trampling of horses feet and the jingling of arms
were distinctly heard at M'Loughlin.'s door--a circumstance which so
completely paralyzed the distracted girl, that she became perfectly
powerless with affright. Phil availed himself of the moment, put his
hand to the window, which he raised up, and deliberately entered, after
which he shut it down. Poll, while he did so, coughed aloud, as if
giving a signal; and in an instant, a number of individuals mostly
females, approached the window, near enough to see young M'Clutchy
enter, and shut the window after him.
“Now,” said Poll to the spectators, “I hope you're all satisfied; and
you, James Harman, will believe your own eyes, if you don't Poll Doolin.
Is that girl a fit wife for your cousin, do you think? Well, you're
satisfied, are you? Go home now, and help forrid the match, if you can.
You're a good witness of her conduct, at any rate.”
“I did not believe you, Poll,” replied the young man whom she addressed;
“but unfortunately I am now satisfied, sure enough. My own eyes cannot
deceive me. Lost and unhappy girl! what will become of her? But that's
not all--for she has proved herself treacherous, and deceitful, and
worthless.”
“Ay,” said the crones whom Poll had brought to witness what certainly
seemed to them to be the innocent girl's shame and degradation--“ay,”
they observed, “there's now an end to her character, at any rate.
The pride of the M'Loughlins has got a fall at last--and indeed they
desarved it; for they held their heads as upsettin' as if they were
dacent Protestants, and them nothing but Papishes affeher all.”
“Go home, now,” said Poll; “go home all of yez. You've seen enough,
and too much. Throth I'm sorry for the girl, and did all I could, to
persuade her against the step she tuck; but it was no use--she was more
like one that tuck love powdhers from him, than a raisonable bein'.”
Harman's cousin had already departed, but in such a state of amazement,
indignation, and disgust, that he felt himself incapable of continuing a
conversation with any one, or of bestowing his attention upon any other
topic whatsoever. He was thunderstruck--his very faculties were nearly
paralyzed, and his whole mind literally clouded in one dark chaos of
confusion and distress.
“Now,” said Poll to the females who accompanied her--“go home every one
of yez; but, for goodness sake don't be spakin' of what you seen this
night. The poor girl's correcther's gone, sure enough; but for all that,
let us have nothing to say to her or Mr. Phil. It'll all come out time
enough, and more than time enough, without our help; so, as I said,
hould a hard cheek about it. Indeed it's the safest way to do so--for
the same M'Loughlins is a dangerous and bitther faction to make or
meddle with. Go off now, in the name of goodness, and say nothin' to
nobody--barring, indeed, to some one that won't carry it farther.”
Whilst this dialogue, which did not occupy more than a couple of
minutes, was proceeding, a scene of a different character took place
in M'Loughlin's parlor, upon a topic which, at that period, was a very
plausible pretext for much brutal outrage and violence on the part of
the Orange yeomanry--we mean the possession, or the imputed
possession, of fire-arms. Indeed the state of society in a great part of
Ireland--shortly after the rebellion of ninety-eight--was then such as a
modern conservative would blush for. An Orangeman, who may have happened
to entertain a pique against a Roman Catholic, or sustained an injury
from one, had nothing more to do than send abroad, or get some one to
send abroad for him, a report that he had fire-arms in his possession.
No sooner had this rumor spread, than a party of these yeomanry
assembled in their regimentals, and with loaded fire-arms, proceeded,
generally in the middle of the night or about day-break, to the
residence of the suspected person. The door, if not immediately opened,
was broken in--the whole house ransacked--the men frequently beaten
severely, and the ears of females insulted by the coarsest and most
indecent language.
These scenes, which in nineteen cases out of twenty, the Orangemen got
up to gratify private hatred and malignity, were very frequent, and
may show us the danger of any government entrusting power, in whatever
shape, or arms or ammunition, to irresponsible hands, or subjecting one
party to the fierce passions and bigoted impulses of another.
The noise of their horses' feet as they approached M'Loughlin's house
in a gallop, alarmed that family, who knew at once that it was a
domiciliary visit from M'Clutchy's cavalry.
“Raise the window,” said M'Loughlin himself, “and ask them what they
want--or stay, open the door,” he added at the same time to another,
“and do not let us give them an excuse for breaking it in. It's the
blood-hounds, sure enough,” observed he, “and here they are.”
In a moment they were dismounted, and having found the hall door
open, the parlor was crowded with armed men, who manifested all the
overbearing insolence and wanton insult of those who know that they can
do so with impunity.
“Come, M'Loughlin,” said Cochrane, now their leader, “you ribelly Papish
rascal, produce your arms--for we have been informed that you have arms
consaled in the house.”
“Pray who informed you, Mr. Cochrane?”
“That's not your business, my man,” replied Cochrane, “out with them
before we search.”
“I'll tell you what, Cochrane,” replied M'Loughlin, “whoever informed
you that we have arms is a liar--we have no arms.”
“And right well they know that,” said his son, “it's not for arms they
come, but it's a good excuse to insult the family.”
His father (who, on looking more closely at them, now perceived that
they were tipsy, and some of them quite drunk) though a man of singular
intrepidity, deemed it the wisest and safest course to speak to them as
civilly as possible.
“I did'nt think, Tom Cochrane,” said he, “that either I or any of my
family, deserved such a visit as this from, I may say, my own door
neighbors. It's not over civil, I think, to come in this manner,
disturbing a quiet and inoffensive family.”
“What's the ribelly rascal sayin'?” asked a drunken fellow, who lurched
across the floor, and would have fallen, had he not come in contact with
a chest of drawers, “what, wha-at's he say-ayin? but I sa-ay here's to
hell with the Po-po-pope--hurra!”
“Ah?” said young M'Loughlin, “you have the ball at your own foot now,
but if we were man to man, with equal weapons, there would be none of
this swagger.”
“What's tha-at the young rible says,” said 'the drunken fellow,
deliberately covering him with his cavalry pistol--“another word, and
I'll let day-light through you.”
“Come, Burke,” said a man named Irwin, throwing up the muzzle of
the pistol, “none o' this work, you drunken brute. Don't be alarmed,
M'Loughlin, you shan't be injured.”
“Go go to h--l, George, I'll do what I--I li-like; sure 'all these
ribels ha-hate King William that sa-saved us from brass money a-and
wooden noggins--eh, stay, shoes it is; no matter, they ought to be
brogues I think, for it--it's brogues--ay, brogues, the papish--it is,
by hell, 'brogues and broghans an' a' the Pa-papishes wear--that
saved us from bra-brass money, an--and wooden brogues, that's it--for
dam-damme if ever the Papishers was da-dacent enough to wear brass
shoes, never, by jingo; so, boys, it's brass brogues--ay, do they
ha-hate King William, that put us in the pil-pillory, the pillory in
hell, and the devils pel-peltin' us with priests,--hurra boys, recover
arms--stand at aise--ha--ram down Catholics--hurra!”
“Mr. M'Loughlin--”
“Mislher M'Loughlin! ay, there's respect for a Pa-pish, an' from a
purple man, too!”
“You had better be quiet, Burke,” retorted Irwin, who was a determined
and powerful man.
“For God's sake, gentlemen,” said Mrs. M'Loughlin, “do not disturb or
alarm our family--you are at liberty to search the house, but, as God
is above us, we have no arms of any kind, and consequently there can be
none in the house.”
“Don't believe her,” said Burke, “she's Papish--” He had not time to add
the offensive epithet, what ever it might have been, for Irwin--who, in
truth, accompanied the party with the special intention of repressing
outrage against the M'Loughlins whom he very much respected--having
caught him by the neck, shook the words back again, as it were, into his
very throat. “You ill-tongued drunken ruffian,” said he, “if you don't
hold your scoundrell tongue, I'll pitch you head foremost out of the
house. We must search, Mrs. M'Loughlin,” said Irwin, “but it will be
done as quietly as possible.”
They then proceeded through all the rooms, into which, singular as it
may appear, they scarcely looked, until they came into that in which we
left Mary M'Loughlin and Phil. The moment this worthy gentleman heard
their approach, he immediately shut the door, and, with all the seeming
trepidation and anxiety of a man who feared discover bustled about, and
made a show of preparing to resist their entrance. On coming to the
door, therefore, they found it shut, and everything apparently silent
within.
“Open the door,” said Irwin, “we want to search for arms.”
“Ah! boys,” said Phil in a whisper through he key-hole, “pass on if you
love me--I give you my word of honor that there's no arms here but a
brace that is worth any money to be locked in.”
“We must open, Mr. Phil,” said Sharpe, “you know our ordhers. By
Japurs,” said he, in a side voice to the rest, “the fellow wasn't
boastin' at all; it's true enough--I'll uould goold he was right, and
that we'll find her inside with him.”
“When I see it, I'll believe it,” said Irwin, but not till then. Open,
sir,” said he, “open, if all's right.”
“Oh, d--n it, boys,” said Phil again, “this is too bad--honor
bright:--surely you wouldn't expose us, especially the girl.” At the
same time he withdrew his shoulder from the door, which flew open, and
discovered him striving to soothe and console Miss M'Loughlin, who
had not yet recovered her alarm and agitation, so as to understand the
circumstances which took place about her. In fact, she had been in that
description of excitement which, without taking away animation, leaves
the female (for it is peculiar to the sex) utterly incapable of taking
anything more than a vague cognizance of that which occurs before her
eyes. The moment she and Phil were discovered together, not all Irwin's
influence could prevent the party from indulging in a shout of triumph.
This startled her, and was, indeed, the means of restoring her to
perfect consciousness, and a full perception of her situation.
“What is this?” she inquired, “and why is it that a peaceable house
is filled with armed men? and you, Mr. M'Clutchy, for what treacherous
purpose did you intrude into my private room?”
M'Loughlin. himself, from a natural dread of collision between his
sons and the licentious yeomanry, and trusting to the friendship and
steadiness of Irwin, literally stood sentinel at the parlor door, and
prevented them from accompanying the others in the search.
“My darling Mary,” said Phil, “it's too late now, you see, to speak in
this tone--we're caught, that's all, found out, and be cursed to these
fellows. If they had found us anywhere else but in your bed-room, I
didn't so much care; however, it can't be helped now.”
As he spoke he raised his eye-brows from time to time at his companions,
and winked with an expression of triumph so cowardly and diabolical,
that it is quite beyond our ability to describe it. They, in the
meantime, winked and nodded in return, laughed heartily, and poked one
another in the ribs.
“Bravo, Mr. Phil!--success, Captain!--more power to you!”
“Come now, boys,” said Phil, “let us go. Mary, my darling, I must leave
you; but we'll meet again where they can't disturb us--stand around me,
boys, for, upon my honor and soul, these hot-headed fellows of brothers
of hers will knock my brain's out, if you don't guard me well; here,
put me in the middle of you--good by, Mary, never mind this, we'll meet
again.”
However anxious M'Loughlin had been to prevent the possibility of angry
words or blows between his sons and these men still the extraordinary
yell which accompanied the discovery of young M'Clutchy in his
daughter's bedroom, occasioned him to relax his vigilance, and rush to
the spot, after having warned and urged them to remain where they were.
Notwithstanding his remonstrances, they followed his footsteps, and the
whole family, in fact, reached her door as Phil uttered the last words.
“Great God, what is this,” exclaimed her father, “how came M'Clutchy,
Val the Vulture's son, into my daughter's sleeping-room? How came you
here, sir?” he added sternly, “explain it.”
Not even a posse of eighteen armed men, standing in a circle about him,
each with a cocked and loaded pistol in his hand, could prevent the
cowardly and craven soul of him from quailing before the eye of her
indignant father. His face became like a sheet of paper, perfectly
bloodless, and his eye sank as if it were never again to look from the
earth, or in the direction of the blessed light of heaven.
“Ah!” he proceeded, “you are, indeed, your treacherous, cowardly, and
cruel father's son; you cannot raise your eye upon me, and neither
could he. Mary,” he proceeded, addressing his daughter, “how did this
treacherous scoundrel get into your room? tell the truth--but that I
need not add, for I know you will.”
His daughter had been standing for some time in a posture that betrayed
neither terror nor apprehension. Raised to her full height, she looked
upon M'Clutchy and his men alternately, but principally upon himself,
with a smile which in truth was fearful. Her eyes brightened into clear
and perfect fire, the roundness of her beautiful arm was distended
by the coming forth of its muscles--her lips became firm--her cheek
heightened in color--and her temples were little less than scarlet.
There she stood, a concentration of scorn, contempt, and hatred the
most intense, pouring upon the dastardly villain an unbroken stream of
withering fury, that was enough to drive back his cowardly soul into the
deepest and blackest recesses of its own satanic baseness. Her father,
in fact, was obliged to address her twice, before he could arrest her
attention; for such was the measureless indignation which her eye poured
upon him, that she could scarcely look upon any other object.
“My child, did you hear me?” said her father. “How did this heartless
and down-looking scoundrel get into your apartment?”
She looked quickly upon her father's features--
“How?” said she; “how but by treachery, falsehood, and fraud! Is he not
Val M'Clutchy's son, my dear father?”
Her brothers had not yet uttered a syllable, but stood like their sister
with flushed cheeks and burning indignation in their eyes. On hearing
what their sister had just said, however, as if they had all been
moved by the same impulse, thought, or determination--as in truth they
were--their countenances became pale as death--they looked at each
other significantly--then at Phil--and they appeared very calm, as
if relieved--satisfied; but the expression of the eye darkened into a
meaning that was dreadful to look upon.
“That is enough, my child,” replied her father; “I suppose, my friends,
you are now satisfied--.”
“Yes, by h--l,” shouted Burke, “we are now satisfied.”
Irwin had him again by the neck--“Silence,” said he, “or, as heaven's
above mo, I'll drive your brainless skull in with the butt of my
pistol.”
“You are satisfied,” continued M'Loughlin, “that there are no arms here.
I hope you will now withdraw. As for you, treacherous and cowardly spawn
of a treacherous and cowardly father, go home and tell him to do his
worst.--that I scorn and defy him--that I will live to see him----; but
I am wrong,he is below our anger, and I will not waste words upon him.”
“You will find you have used a thrifle too many for all that,” said
another of them; “when he hears them, you may be sure he'll put them in
his pocket for you--as hear them he will.”
“We don't care a d--n,” said another, “what he does to blackguard
Papishes, so long as he's a right good Orangeman, and a right good
Protestant, too.”
“Come now,” said Irwin, “our duty is over--let us start for home; we
have no further business here.”
“Won't you give us something to drink?” asked a new voice; “I think we
desarve it for our civility. We neither broke doors nor furniture, nor
stabbed either bed or bed-clothes. We treated you well, and if you're
dacent you'll treat us well.”
“Confound him,” said a fresh hand; “I'd not drink his cursed Papish
whiskey. Sure the Papishes gets the priest to christen it for them. I
wouldn't drink his cursed Papish whiskey.”
“No, nor I,” said several voices;--upon which a loud and angry dispute
arose among them, as to whether it were consistent with true loyalty,
and the duties of a staunch Protestant and Orangeman, to drink 'Papish
liquor,' as they termed it, at all.
Irwin, who joined the negative party, insisted strongly that it would be
disgraceful for any man who had drunk the glorious, pious, and immortal
memory, ever to contaminate his loyal lips with whiskey that had been
made a Papish of by the priest. This carried the argument, or otherwise
it is hard to say what mischief might have arisen, had they heightened
their previous intoxication.
Phil, during this dialogue, still retained his place in the centre
of his friends; but from time to time he kept glancing from under his
eyebrows at M'Loughlin and his sons, in that spaniel-like manner, which
betrays a consciousness of offence and a dread of punishment.
Irwin now caused them to move off; and, indeed, scarcely anything could
be more ludicrous than the utter prostration of all manly feeling upon
the part of the chief offender. On separating, the same baleful
and pallid glances were exchanged between the brothers, who clearly
possessed an instinctive community of feeling upon the chief incident of
the night--we mean that of finding M'Clutchy in their sister's bedroom.
Irwin noticed their mute, motionless, but ghastly resentment, as did
Phil himself, who, whether they looked at him or not, felt that their
eyes were upon him, and that come what might, so long as he remained
in the country he was marked as their victim. This consciousness of his
deserts was not at all lessened by the observations of Irwin upon his
conduct; for be it known, that although there subsisted a political bond
that caused Phil and the violent spirits of the neighborhood to come
frequently together, yet nothing could exceed the contempt which they
felt for him in his private and individual capacity.
“Brother M'Clutchy,” said Irwin, “I'm afraid you've made a bad night's
work of it. By the moon above us, I wouldn't take the whole Castle
Cumber property and stand in your shoes from this night out.”
“Why so?” said Phil, who was now safe and beyond their immediate reach;
“why so, Irwin? I'll tell you what, Irwin; d---- my honor, but I think
you're cowardly. Did you see how steady I was to-night? Not a syllable
escaped my lips; but, zounds, didn't you see how my eye told?”
“Faith, I certainly did, brother Phil, and a devilish bad tale it told,
too, for yourself. Your father has promised me a new lease, with your
life in it; but after this night, and after what I saw, I'll beg to have
your name left out of that transaction.”
“But didn't you see, George,” returned Phil, “that a man of them
durstn't look me in the face? They couldn't stand my eye; upon my honor
they couldn't.”
“Ay,” said Burke, “that's because they're Papishes. A rascally Papish
can never look a Protestant in the face.”
“Well but,” said Phil, “you would not believe that the girl was so fond
of me as she is, until you saw it. I knew very well they had no arms;
so, as I wished to give you an opportunity of judging for yourselves, I
put the journey upon that footing.”
“Well,” said Irwin, “we shall see the upshot--that's all.”
They then escorted Phil home, after which they dispersed.
When M'Loughlin's family assembled in the parlor, after their departure,
a deep gloom I brooded over them for some minutes. Mary herself was the
first to introduce the incident which gave them so much distress, and in
which she herself had been so painfully involved. She lost not a moment,
therefore, in relating fully and candidly the whole nature of her
intercourse with Poll Doolin, and the hopes held out to her of Harman's
safety, through Phil M'Clutchy. At the same time, she expressed in
forcible language, the sacrifice of feeling which it had cost her, and
the invincible disgust with which she heard his very name alluded
to. She then simply related the circumstance of his entering her
room through the open window, and her belief, in consequence of the
representations of Poll Doolin, that he did so out of his excessive
anxiety to prevent bloodshed by the troopers--the trampling of whose
horses' feet and the ringing of whose arms had so completely overpowered
her with the apprehension of violence, that she became incapable of
preventing M'Clutchy's entrance, or even of uttering a word for two or
three minutes.
“However,” said she, “I now see their design, which was to' ruin my
reputation, and throw a stain upon my character and good name. So far, I
fear, they have succeeded.” Tears then came to her relief, and she wept
long and bitterly.
“Do not let it trouble you, my darling,” said her father. “Your
conscience and heart are innocent, and that is a satisfaction greater
than anything can deprive you of. You were merely wrong in not letting
us know the conversation that took place between Poll Doolin and you;
because, although you did not know it, we could have told you that Poll
is a woman that no modest female ought to speak to in a private way.
There was your error, Mary; but the heart was right with you, and
there's no one here going to blame you for a fault that you didn't know
to be one.”
Mary started on hearing this account of Poll Doolin, for she felt now
that the interviews she held with her were calculated to heighten her
disgrace, when taken in connection with the occurrence of the night.
Her brothers, however, who knew her truth and many virtues, joined their
parents in comforting and supporting her, but without the success which
they could have wished. The more she thought of the toils and snares
that had been laid for her, the more her perception of the calamity
began to gain strength, and her mind to darken. She became restless,
perplexed, and feverish--her tears ceased to flow--she sighed deeply,
and seemed to sink into that most withering of maladies, dry grief,
which, in her case, was certainly the tearless anguish of the heart.
In this state she went to bed, conscious of her own purity, but by no
means, in its full extent, of the ruined reputation to which she must
awake on the succeeding day.
Mary's brothers, with the exception of the words in which they joined
their father and mother in consoling her, scarcely uttered a syllable
that night--the same silent spirit, be it of good or evil, remained upon
them. They looked at each other, however, from time to time, and seemed
to need no other interpreter of what passed within them, but their own
wild and deep-meaning glances. This did not escape their father, who was
so much struck, perhaps alarmed, by it, that he very properly deemed it
his duty to remonstrate with them on the subject.
“Boys,” said he, “I don't understand your conduct this night, and, above
all, I don't understand your looks--or rather, I think I do, I'm afraid
I do--but, listen to me, remember that revenge belongs to God. You know
what the Scripture says, 'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I will
repay it.' Leave that bad son of a worse father to God.”
“He has destroyed Mary's reputation,” said John, the eldest; “I might,
possibly, forgive him if he had killed her like a common murderer, but
he has destroyed our pure-hearted sister's reputation, ha, ha, ha.” The
laugh that followed these last words came out so unexpectedly, abruptly,
and wildly, that his father and mother both started. He then took the
poker in his hands, and, with a smile at his brothers, in which much
might be read, he clenched his teeth, and wound it round his arms with
apparent ease. “If I gotten thousand pounds,” said he, “I could not have
done that two hours ago, but I can now--are you satisfied?” said he to
his brothers.
“Yes, John,” they replied, “we are satisfied--that will do.”
“Yes,” he proceeded, “I could forgive anything but that. The father's
notice to us to quit the holding on which we and our forefathers lived
so long, and expended so much money--and his refusal to grant us a
lease, are nothing:--now we could forgive all that; but this,
this--oh, I have no name for it--the language has not words to express
it--but--well, well, no matter for the present. If the cowardly
scoundrel would fight!--but he won't, for the courage is not in him.”