“On a small scale, perhaps,” said Wayland Smith, laughing.  “But this evening, or to-morrow, will an old man come hither with thy father, who has the stealthy step of the cat, the shrewd and vindictive eye of the rat, the fawning wile of the spaniel, the determined snatch of the mastiff—­of him beware, for your own sake and that of your distress.  See you, fair Janet, he brings the venom of the aspic under the assumed innocence of the dove.  What precise mischief he meditates towards you I cannot guess, but death and disease have ever dogged his footsteps.  Say nought of this to thy mistress; my art suggests to me that in her state the fear of evil may be as dangerous as its operation.  But see that she take my specific, for” (he lowered his voice, and spoke low but impressively in her ear) “it is an antidote against poison.—­Hark, they enter the garden!”

In effect, a sound of noisy mirth and loud talking approached the garden door, alarmed by which Wayland Smith sprung into the midst of a thicket of overgrown shrubs, while Janet withdrew to the garden-house that she might not incur observation, and that she might at the same time conceal, at least for the present, the purchases made from the supposed pedlar, which lay scattered on the floor of the summer-house.

Janet, however, had no occasion for anxiety.  Her father, his old attendant, Lord Leicester’s domestic, and the astrologer, entered the garden in tumult and in extreme perplexity, endeavouring to quiet Lambourne, whose brain had now become completely fired with liquor, and who was one of those unfortunate persons who, being once stirred with the vinous stimulus, do not fall asleep like other drunkards, but remain partially influenced by it for many hours, until at length, by successive draughts, they are elevated into a state of uncontrollable frenzy.  Like many men in this state also, Lambourne neither lost the power of motion, speech, or expression; but, on the contrary, spoke with unwonted emphasis and readiness, and told all that at another time he would have been most desirous to keep secret.

“What!” ejaculated Michael, at the full extent of his voice, “am I to have no welcome, no carouse, when I have brought fortune to your old, ruinous dog-house in the shape of a devil’s ally, that can change slate-shivers into Spanish dollars?—­Here, you, Tony Fire-the-Fagot, Papist, Puritan, hypocrite, miser, profligate, devil, compounded of all men’s sins, bow down and reverence him who has brought into thy house the very mammon thou worshippest.”

“For God’s sake,” said Foster, “speak low—­come into the house—­thou shalt have wine, or whatever thou wilt.”

“No, old puckfoist, I will have it here,” thundered the inebriated ruffian—­“here, Al fresco, as the Italian hath it.  No, no, I will not drink with that poisoning devil within doors, to be choked with the fumes of arsenic and quick-silver; I learned from villain Varney to beware of that.”