She then peeped out to see that the coast was clear, and finding that all was safe, she turned her steps hurriedly and stealthily, in a direction leading from, instead of to Castle Cumber.  When she was gone, Raymond immediately closed and bolted the door, and began as before, to spring up in the air in a most singular and unaccountable manner.  The glee, however, which became apparent on his countenance, had an expression of ferocity that was frightful; his eyes gleamed with fire, his nostrils expanded, and a glare of terrible triumph lit up every feature with something of a lurid light.

“Ha, ha!” he exclaimed, addressing, as some imaginary individual, an old pillow which he caught up; “I have you at last—­now, now, now; ha, you have a throat, have you?  I feel it now, now, now!  Ay, that will do; hoo, hoo—­out with it, out with it; I see the tip of it only, but you must give better measure ay, that’s like it.  Hee, hee, hee!  Oh, there—­that same tongue never did you good, nor anybody else good—­and what blessed eyes you have! they are comin’ out, too, by degrees, as the lawyers goes to Heaven!  Now! now! now! ay, where’s your strugglin’ gone to?  It’s little you’ll make of it in Raymond’s iron fingers—­Halloo, this is for white-head, and white-head’s—­poor little white-head’s—–­father, and for poor little white-head’s mother, and this—­ay, the froth’s comin’ now, now, now—­and this last’s for poor Mary M’Loughlin!  Eh, ho, ho!  There now—­settled at last, with your sweet grin upon you, and your tongue out, as if you were makin’ fun of me—­for a beauty you were, and a beauty you are, and there I lave you!”

While uttering these words, he went through with violent gesticulations, the whole course and form of physical action that he deemed necessary to the act of strangling worthy Phil, whose graceful eidolon was receiving at his hands this unpleasant specimen of the pressure from without.  He had one knee on the ground, his huge arms moving with muscular energy, as he crushed and compressed the pillow, until the very veins of his forehead stood out nearly black with the force at once of hatred and exertion.  Waving thus wrought his vengeance out to his own satisfaction, he once more, in imagination, transformed the pillow into his little white-head, as he loved to call him; and assumed a very different aspect from that which marked the strangulation scene just described.

“Come here,” said he—­taking it up tenderly in his arms—­“come here—­don’t be afeard now; there’s nobody that can do you any harm.  Ah! my poor white-head—­don’t! you want your mother to keep up your poor sick head, and to lay your poor pale face against her breast?  And your father—­you would like to get upon his knee and climb up to kiss him—­wouldn’t you, white-head?  Yes, he says he would—­white-head says he would—­and tell me, sure I have the cock for you still; and if you want a drink I have-something better than bog wather for you—­the sickening