In vain was all Jemmy or I could say to him.  I offered once to take hold of his hands, because he was going to do himself a mischief, as I believed, looking about for his pistols, which he had laid upon the table, but which Will., unseen, had taken out with him, [a faithful, honest dog, that Will.!  I shall for ever love the fellow for it,] and he hit me a d—­d dowse of the chops, as made my nose bleed.  ’Twas well ’twas he, for I hardly knew how to take it.

Jemmy raved at him, and told him, how wicked it was in him, to be so brutish to abuse a friend, and run mad for a woman.  And then he said he was sorry for it; and then Will. ventured in with water and a towel; and the dog rejoiced, as I could see by his look, that I had it rather than he.

And so, by degrees, we brought him a little to his reason, and he promised to behave more like a man.  And so I forgave him:  and we rode on in the dark to here at Doleman’s.  And we all tried to shame him out of his mad, ungovernable foolishness:  for we told him, as how she was but a woman, and an obstinate perverse woman too; and how could he help it?

And you know, Jack, (as we told him, moreover,) that it was a shame to manhood, for a man, who had served twenty and twenty women as bad or worse, let him have served Miss Harlowe never so bad, should give himself such obstropulous airs, because she would die:  and we advised him never to attempt a woman proud of her character and virtue, as they call it, any more:  for why?  The conquest did not pay trouble; and what was there in one woman more than another?  Hay, you know, Jack!—­And thus we comforted him, and advised him.

But yet his d—­d addled pate runs upon this lady as much now she’s dead as it did when she was living.  For, I suppose, Jack, it is no joke:  she is certainly and bona fide dead:  I’n’t she?  If not, thou deservest to be doubly d—­d for thy fooling, I tell thee that.  So he will have me write for particulars of her departure.

He won’t bear the word dead on any account.  A squeamish puppy!  How love unmans and softens!  And such a noble fellow as this too!  Rot him for an idiot, and an oaf!  I have no patience with the foolish duncical dog —­upon my soul, I have not!

So send the account, and let him howl over it, as I suppose he will.

But he must and shall go abroad:  and in a month or two Jemmy, and you, and I, will join him, and he’ll soon get the better of this chicken-hearted folly, never fear; and will then be ashamed of himself:  and then we’ll not spare him; though now, poor fellow, it were pity to lay him on so thick as he deserves.  And do thou, till then, spare all reflections upon him; for, it seems, thou hast worked him unmercifully.

I was willing to give thee some account of the hand we have had with the tearing fellow, who had certainly been a lost man, had we not been with him; or he would have killed somebody or other.  I have no doubt of it.  And now he is but very middling; sits grinning like a man in straw; curses and swears, and is confounded gloomy; and creeps into holes and corners, like an old hedge-hog hunted for his grease.