“But if a’ do, you’ll only beat and throttle me to death, Sir Thomas.”

“Whether I may or may not do so, go on, villain, and—­go on, that quickly, or by heavens I shall tear the venomous heart from your body, and trample the black intelligence out of it.  Proceed instantly.”

With a face of such distress as our readers may well imagine, and a voice whose quavers of terror wrere in admirable accordance with it, the unfortunate Crackenfudge related the circumstance of Lucy’s visit to Dublin, as he considered it, and, in fact, so far as he was acquainted with her motions, as it appeared to him a decided elopement, without the possibility of entertaining either doubt or mistake about it.

In the meantime, how shall we describe the savage fury of the baronet, as the trembling wretch proceeded?  It is impossible.  His rage, the vehemence of his gestures, the spasms that seemed to sey;e sometimes upon his features and sometimes upon his limbs, as well as upon different parts of his body, transformed him into the appearance of something that was unnatural and frightful.  He bit his lips in the effort to restrain these tremendous paroxysms, until the bloody foam fell in red flakes from his mouth, and as portions of it were carried by the violence of his gesticulations over several parts of his face, he had more the appearance of some bloody-fanged ghoul, reeking from the spoil of a midnight grave, than that of a human being.

“Now,” said he, “how did it happen that—­brainless, worthless, and beneath all contempt, as you are, most execrable scoundrel—­you suffered that adroit ruffian, Dulcimer—­whom I shall punish, never fear—­how came it, you despicable libel on nature and common sense—­that you allowed him to humbug you to your face, to laugh at you, to scorn you, to spit upon you, to poke your ribs, as if you were an idiot, as you are, and to kick you, as it were, in every imaginable part of your worthless carcass—­how did it come, I say, that you did not watch them properly, that you did not get them immediately arrested, as you ought to have done, or that you did not do more than would merely enable you to chronicle my disgrace and misery?”

“A’ did all a’ could, Sir Thomas.  A’ searched through all Dublin for her without success; but as to where he has her, a’ can’t guess.  The first thing a’ did, after takin’ a sleep, was to come an’ tell you to-day; for a’ travelled home by last night’s coach.  You ought to do something, Sir Thomas, for every one has it now.  It’s through all Ballytrain.  ‘Deed a’ pity you, Sir Thomas.”

Now this unfortunate being took it for granted that the last brief silence of the baronet resulted from, some reasonable attention to what he (Crackenfudge) had been saying, whereas the fact was, that his terrible auditor had been transfixed into the highest and most uncontrollable fit of indignation by the substance of his words.