tremulous tone that he was very glad I had come.

'You interrupted us at a critical moment,' said he, pointing to the
man whom I had found in company with him; 'this fellow will
murder me one of these days. He would have done so, long ago, if
he had dared.'

'Bah! You would swear away my life if you could,' returned the
other, after bestowing a stare and a frown on me; 'we all know that!'

'I almost think I could,' cried the old man, turning feebly upon him.
'If oaths, or prayers, or words, could rid me of you, they should. I
would be quit of you, and would be relieved if you were dead.'

'I know it,' returned the other. 'I said so, didn't I? But neither oaths,
or prayers, nor words, WILL kill me, and therefore I live, and mean
to live.'

'And his mother died!' cried the old man, passionately clasping his
hands and looking upward; 'and this is Heaven's justice!'

The other stood lunging with his foot upon a chair, and regarded him
with a contemptuous sneer. He was a young man of one-and-twenty
or thereabouts; well made, and certainly handsome, though the
expression of his face was far from prepossessing, having in
common with his manner and even his dress, a dissipated, insolent
air which repelled one.

'Justice or no justice,' said the young fellow, 'here I am and here I
shall stop till such time as I think fit to go, unless you send for