He seized unfortunate Skinadre by the neck, as he spoke, and almost at the same moment forced him to project his tongue about three inches out of his mouth, causing his face at the same time to assume, by the violence of the act, an expression of such comic distress and terror, as it was difficult to look upon with gravity.

“Is it thrue,” he repeated, in a voice of thunder, “that you’ve dared to do so scoundrelly an act, an’ she, the unfortunate creature, famishing wid hunger herself?”

While he spake, he held Skinadre’s neck as if in a vice—­firm in the same position—­and the latter, of course, could do nothing more than turn his ferret eyes round as well as he could, to entreat him to relax his grip.

“Don’t choke him, Tom,” exclaimed Hacket, who came forward, to interpose; “you’ll strangle him; as Heaven’s above, you will.”

“An’ what great crime would that be?” answered the other, relaxing his awful grip of the miser.  “Isn’t he an’ every cursed meal-monger like him a curse and a scourge to the counthry—­and hasn’t the same counthry curses and scourges enough widhout either him or them?  Answer me now,” he proceeded, turning to Skinadre, “why did you send her away widout the food she wanted?”

“My heart bled for her; but—­”

“It’s a lie, you born hypocrite—­it’s a lie—­your heart never bled for anything, or anybody.”

“But you don’t know,” replied the miser, “what I lost by—­”

“It’s a lie, I say,” thundered out the gigantic young fellow, once more seizing the unfortunate meal-monger by the throat, when out again went his tongue, like a piece of machinery touched by a spring, and again were the red eyes now almost starting out of his head, turned round, whilst he himself was in a state of suffocation, that rendered his appearance ludicrous beyond description—­“it’s a lie, I say, for you have neither thruth nor heart—­that’s what we all know.”

“For Heaven’s sake, let the man go,” said Hacket, “or you’ll have his death to answer for “—­and as he spoke he attempted to unclasp the young man’s grip; “Tom Dalton, I say, let the man go.”

Dalton, who was elder brother to the lover of Mave Sullivan, seized Hacket with one of his hands, and spun him like a child to the other end of the room.

“Keep away,” he exclaimed, “till I settle wid him—­here now, Skinadre, listen to me—­you refused my father credit when we wanted it, although you knew we were honest—­you refused him credit when we were turned out of our place, although you knew the sickness was among us—­well, you know whether we that wor your friends, an’—­my father at least—­the makin’ of you”—­and as he spoke, he accompanied every third word by a shake or two, as a kind of running commentary upon what he said; “ay—­you did—­you knew it well, and I could bear all that; but I can’t bear you to turn this unfortunate girl out of your place, widout what she wants, and she’s sinkin’ wid hunger herself.  If she’s in distress, ‘twas I that brought her to it, an’ to shame an’ to sorrow too—­but I’ll set all right for you yet, Margaret dear—­an’ no one has a betther right to spake for her.”