your hold this instant, or I will dash you to pieces!"

Thornton kept a firm gripe of the picture. "Here's a to-do!" said he
tauntingly: "was there ever such work about a poor--(using a word too
coarse for repetition) before?"

The word had scarcely passed his lips, when he was stretched at his full
length upon the ground. Nor did Glanville stop there. With all the
strength of his nervous and Herculean frame, fully requited for the
debility of disease by the fury of the moment, he seized the gamester as
if he had been an infant, and dragged him to the door: the next moment I
heard his heavy frame rolling down the stairs with no decorous slowness
of descent.

Glanville re-appeared. "Good God!" I cried, "what have you done?" But he
was too lost in his still unappeased rage to heed me. He leaned, panting
and breathless, against the wall, with clenched teeth, and a flashing
eye, rendered more terribly bright by the feverish lustre natural to his
disease.

Presently I heard Thornton re-ascend the stairs: he opened the door, and
entered but one pace. Never did human face wear a more fiendish
expression of malevolence and wrath. "Sir Reginald Glanville," he said,
"I thank you heartily. He must have iron nails who scratches a bear. You
have sent me a challenge, and the hangman shall bring you my answer. Good
day, Sir Reginald--good day, Mr. Pelham;" and so saying, he shut the
door, and rapidly descending the stairs, was out of the house in an
instant.

"There is no time to be lost," said I, "order post horses to your