“Eh!” said Turbot, starting, “what’s that you say?  Starve us out!  What an infamous and unconstitutional project!  What a diabolical procedure!  But I forgot—­bravo, Purcel!  This was all the case before upon your own showing.”

“Well, sir,” returned Purcel, “there was at least this difference, that I was able to get something out of them then, but devil a copper can I get out o’ them now.  I think you’ll admit, sir, that this fact gives some weight to my argument.”

“You don’t mean to say, Purcel,” replied the other, from whose chin the rosy tint gradually paled away until it assumed that peculiar hue which is found inside of a marine shell, that is to say, white with a dream of red barely and questionably visible; “you don’t mean to say, my good friend Purcel, that you have no money for me on this occasion?”

“By no means, sir,” replied the proctor.  “Money I have got for you, no doubt—­money I have got certainly.”

The double chin once more assumed its natural hue of celestial rosy red.”

“Upon my honor, Purcel,” he replied, “I have not temper for this; it seems to me that you take particular delight in wantonly tampering with my feelings.  I am really quite tired of it.  Why harass and annoy me with your alarms?  Conspiracy, blood, and massacre are the feeblest terms in your vocabulary.  It is absolutely ridiculous, sir, and I beg you will put an end to it.”

“I would be very glad to do so, sir,” replied Purcel; “and still more satisfied if I had never had anything to do with the temporalities of your church.”

“I don’t see why, above all men living, you should say so, Purcel; you have feathered your nest tolerably well by the temporalities of our church.”

“If I have, sir,” replied the proctor, “it has been at the expense of my popularity and good name.  I and my family are looked upon as a part and parcel of your system, and, I may add, as the worst and most odious part of it.  I and they are looked upon as the bitterest enemies of the people; and because we endeavor to get out of them the means of enabling you to maintain your rank in the world, we are obliged to hear ourselves branded every day in the week as villains, oppressors, and blood-suckers.  This, however, we could bear; but to know that we are marked down for violence, brutality, and, if possible, assassination, is a penalty for which nothing in your establishment could compensate us.  I and my sons have received several notices of violence in every shape, and we are obliged to sleep with our house half filled with arms and ammunition, in dread of an attack every night in the year.”

“Well, well,” replied Turbot, “this, after all, is but the old story; the matter is only an ebullition, and will pass away.  I know you are constitutionally timid.  I know you are; and have in fact a great deal of the natural coward in your disposition; and I say natural, because a man is no more to be blamed for being born a coward than he is for being born with a bad complexion or an objectionable set of features.  You magnify the dangers about you, and, in fact, become a self-tormentor.  As for my part, I am glad you have got money, for I do assure you, I never stood so much in need of it in my life.”