very word--and my good luck is wormwood; so much for lifting a hand
against gray hairs, Jew or Gentile. Why did the old heathen provoke
me, then? I'd as soon die as live this day. That's right, start at a
handful of straw; lie down in it one minute and tremble at the sight
of it the next, ye idiot. Oh, Susan! Susan! Why do I think of her? why
do I think of her? She loves that man with every fiber of her body.
How she clung to him! how she grew to him! And I stood there and
looked on it, and did not kill them both. Seen it! I see it now, it is
burned into my eyes and my heart forever; I am in hell!--I am in
hell!--Hold up, you blundering fool; has the devil got into you,
too?--Perdition seize him! May he die and rot before the year's out,
ten thousand miles from home! may his ship sink to the bottom of the
----. What right have I to curse the man, as well as drive him across
the sea? Curse yourself, John Meadows. They are true lovers, and I
have parted them, and looked on and seen their tears. Heaven pity them
and forgive me. So he knew of his brother's love for her, after all.
Why didn't he speak to me, I wonder, as well as to Will Fielding? The
old Jew warned him against me, I'll swear. Why? why because you are a
respectable man, John Meadows, and he thought a hint was enough to a
man of character. 'I do suppose I am safe from villainy here,' says
he. That lad spared me; he could have given me a red face before them
all. Now if there are angels that float in the air and see what passes
among us sinners, how must John Meadows have looked beside George
Fielding that moment? This love will sink my soul! I can't breathe
between these hedges; my temples are bursting!--Oh! you want to
gallop, do you? gallop, then, and faster than you ever did since you
were foaled--confound ye!" With this he spurred his mare furiously up
the bank, and went crushing through the dead hedge that surmounted it.
He struck his hat, at the same moment, fiercely from his head (it was
fast by a black ribbon to his button-hole), and as they lighted by a