“I’d have you ducked for a witch, for two-pence,” roared the Captain up the staircase, with his hand on the banisters, standing on the lobby.  But the door of the chamber of death clapped angrily, and he went down to the parlour, where he examined the holy candle for a while, with a tipsy gravity, and then with something of that reverential feeling for the symbolic, which is not uncommon in rakes and scamps, he thoughtfully locked it up in a press, where were accumulated all sorts of obsolete rubbish—­soiled packs of cards, disused tobacco pipes, broken powder flasks, his military sword, and a dusky bundle of the “Flash Songster,” and other questionable literature.

He did not trouble the dead lady’s room any more.  Being a volatile man it is probable that more cheerful plans and occupations began to entertain his fancy.

CHAPTER III

My Uncle Watson Visits Wauling

So the poor lady was buried decently, and Captain Walshawe reigned alone for many years at Wauling.  He was too shrewd and too experienced by this time to run violently down the steep hill that leads to ruin.  So there was a method in his madness; and after a widowed career of more than forty years, he, too, died at last with some guineas in his purse.

Forty years and upwards is a great edax rerum, and a wonderful chemical power.  It acted forcibly upon the gay Captain Walshawe.  Gout supervened, and was no more conducive to temper than to enjoyment, and made his elegant hands lumpy at all the small joints, and turned them slowly into crippled claws.  He grew stout when his exercise was interfered with, and ultimately almost corpulent.  He suffered from what Mr. Holloway calls “bad legs,” and was wheeled about in a great leathern-backed chair, and his infirmities went on accumulating with his years.

I am sorry to say, I never heard that he repented, or turned his thoughts seriously to the future.  On the contrary, his talk grew fouler, and his fun ran upon his favourite sins, and his temper waxed more truculent.  But he did not sink into dotage.  Considering his bodily infirmities, his energies and his malignities, which were many and active, were marvellously little abated by time.  So he went on to the close.  When his temper was stirred, he cursed and swore in a way that made decent people tremble.  It was a word and a blow with him; the latter, luckily, not very sure now.  But he would seize his crutch and make a swoop or a pound at the offender, or shy his medicine-bottle, or his tumbler, at his head.

It was a peculiarity of Captain Walshawe, that he, by this time, hated nearly everybody.  My uncle, Mr. Watson, of Haddlestone, was cousin to the Captain, and his heir-at-law.  But my uncle had lent him money on mortgage of his estates, and there had been a treaty to sell, and terms and a price were agreed upon, in “articles” which the lawyers said were still in force.