that your imagination were preoccupied by the thought of her old age, her sufferings, her disappointed hopes, her regretful dream of bygone youth, and beauty, and love, and all the tender fancies which might well spring out of such a mournful spectacle, would you not be but too likely (pardon the bathos) to end by sending her an elderly gentleman’s medicine after all, and so either frightfully increasing her sufferings, or ending them once for all?”

Tom said this in the most quiet and natural tone, without even a twinkle of his wicked eye:  but Elsley heard him begin with reddening face; and as he went on, the red had turned to purple, and then to deadly yellow; till making a half-step forward he cried fiercely:—­

“Sir!” and then stopped suddenly; for his feet slipped upon the polished stone, and on his face he fell into the pool at Thurnall’s feet.

“Well for both of us geese!” said Tom inwardly, as he went to pick him up.  “I verily believe he was going to strike me, and that would have done for neither of us.  I was a fool to say it; but the temptation was so exquisite; and it must have come some day.”

But Vavasour staggered up of his own accord, and dashing away Tom’s proffered hand, was rushing off without a word.

“Not so, Mr. John Briggs!” said Tom, making up his mind in a moment that he must have it out now, or never; and that he might have everything to fear from Vavasour if he let him go home furious.  We do not part thus, sir!”

“We will meet again, if you will,” foamed Vavasour, “but it shall end in the death of one of us!”

“By each other’s potions?  I can doctor myself, sir, thank you.  Listen to me, John Briggs!  You shall listen!” and Tom sprang past him, and planted himself at the foot of the rock steps, to prevent his escaping upward.

“What, do you wish to quarrel with me, sir?  It is I who ought to quarrel with you.  I am the aggrieved party, and not you, sir!  I have not seen the son of the man who, when I was an apothecary’s boy, petted me, lent me books, introduced me as a genius, turned my head for me, which was just what I was vain enough to enjoy—­I have not seen that man’s son cast ashore penniless and friendless, and yet never held out to him a helping hand, but tried to conceal my identity from him, from a dirty shame of my honest father’s honest name.”

Vavasour dropped his eyes, for was it not true? but he raised them again more fiercely than ever.

“Curse you!  I owe you nothing.  It was you who made me ashamed of it.  You rhymed on it, and laughed about poetry coming out of such a name.”

“And what if I did?  Are poets to “be made of nothing but tinder and gall?” Why could you not take an honest joke as it was meant, and go your way like other people, till you had shown yourself worth something, and won honour even, for the name of Briggs?”

“And I have!  I have my own station now, my own fame, sir, and it is nothing to you what I choose to call myself.  I have won my place, I say, and your mean envy cannot rob me of it.”