poor girl and carrying her off behind your postillions--your trotting
undertakers! and the hours of her life reckoned in milestones. She's
here to contradict me, if she can. Dorothy Beltham was your "Government"
that paid the annuity.'

I took Dorothy Beltham into my arms. She was trembling excessively, yet
found time to say, 'Bear up, dearest; keep still.' All I thought and
felt foundered in tears.

For a while I heard little distinctly of the tremendous tirade which the
vindictive old man, rendered thrice venomous by the immobility of the
petrified large figure opposed to him, poured forth. My poor father did
not speak because he could not; his arms dropped; and such was the
torrent of attack, with its free play of thunder and lightning in the
form of oaths, epithets, short and sharp comparisons, bitter home thrusts
and most vehement imprecatory denunciations, that our protesting voices
quailed. Janet plucked at my aunt Dorothy's dress to bear her away.

'I can't leave my father,' I said.

'Nor I you, dear,' said the tender woman; and so we remained to be
scourged by this tongue of incarnate rage.

'You pensioner of a silly country spinster!' sounded like a return to
mildness. My father's chest heaved up.

I took advantage of the lull to make myself heard: I did but heap fuel on
fire, though the old man's splenetic impetus had partly abated.

'You Richmond! do you hear him? he swears he's your son, and asks to be