The priest had observed this, and naturally imputed the feeling to an impression of remorse, not, it is true, unmingled with indignation.  We may imagine his surprise, therefore, on seeing that face suddenly change into one of the wildest and most malignant delight.  A series of dry, husky hiccoughs, or what is termed the black laugh, rapidly repeated, proceeded from between his thin jaws, and his eyes now blazed with an expression of such fiery and triumphant vengeance, that the other felt as if some fiendish incarnation of malignity, and not a man, sat before him.

“Crush me!” he exclaimed, “crush me, indeed!  Wait a little.  What have I been doin’ all this time?  I tell you that I have been every day for this many a long year windin’ myself like a serpent about him, till I get him fairly in my power; and when I do—­then for one sharp, deadly sting into his heart:—­ay, and, like the serpent, it’s in my tongue that sting lies—­from that tongue the poison must come that will give me the revenge that I’ve been long waitin’ for.”

“You speak,” replied the priest, “and, indeed, you look more like an evil spirit than a man, Anthony.  This language is disgraceful and unchristian, and such as no human being should utter.  How can you think of death with such principles in your heart?”

“I’ll tell you how I think on death:  I’m afeared of it when I think of that poor, heartbroken woman, Lady Gourlay; but when I think of him—­of him—­I do hope and expect that my last thought in this world will be the delightful one that I’ve had my revenge on him.”

“And you would risk the misery of another world for the gratification of one evil passion in this!  Oh, God help you, and forgive you, and turn your heart!”

“God help me, and forgive me, and turn my heart! but not so far as he is consarned.  I neither wish it, nor pray for it, and what’s more, if you were fifty priests, I never will.  Let us drop this subject, then, for so long as we talk of him, I feel as if the blood in my ould veins was all turned into fire.”

The priest saw and felt that this was true, and resolved to be guided by the hint he had unconsciously received.  To remonstrate with him upon Christian principles, in that mood of mind, would, he knew, be to no purpose.  If there were an assailable point about him, he concluded, from his own words, that it was in connection with the sufferings of Lady Gourlay, and the fate of her child.  On this point, therefore, he resolved to sound him, and ascertain, without, if possible, alarming him, how far he would go on—­whether he felt disposed to advance at all, or not.

“Well,” said the priest, “since you are resolved upon an act of vengeance—­against which, as a Christian priest and a Christian man, I doubly protest—­I think it only right that you should perform an act of justice also.  You know it is wrong to confound the innocent with the guilty.  There is Lady Gourlay, with the arrow of grief, and probably despair, rankling in her heart for years.  Now, you could restore that woman to happiness—­you could restore her lost child to happiness, and bid the widowed mother’s heart leap for joy.”