and looking on the sterile rocks about me, exclaimed—­“They do not cry, long live the Earl!” Nor, when night came, accompanied by drizzling rain and cold, would I return home; for I knew that each cottage rang with the praises of Adrian; as I felt my limbs grow numb and chill, my pain served as food for my insane aversion; nay, I almost triumphed in it, since it seemed to afford me reason and excuse for my hatred of my unheeding adversary.  All was attributed to him, for I confounded so entirely the idea of father and son, that I forgot that the latter might be wholly unconscious of his parent’s neglect of us; and as I struck my aching head with my hand, I cried:  “He shall hear of this!  I will be revenged!  I will not suffer like a spaniel!  He shall know, beggar and friendless as I am, that I will not tamely submit to injury!” Each day, each hour added to these exaggerated wrongs.  His praises were so many adder’s stings infixed in my vulnerable breast.  If I saw him at a distance, riding a beautiful horse, my blood boiled with rage; the air seemed poisoned by his presence, and my very native English was changed to a vile jargon, since every phrase I heard was coupled with his name and honour.  I panted to relieve this painful heart-burning by some misdeed that should rouse him to a sense of my antipathy.  It was the height of his offending, that he should occasion in me such intolerable sensations, and not deign himself to afford any demonstration that he was aware that I even lived to feel them.

It soon became known that Adrian took great delight in his park and preserves.  He never sported, but spent hours in watching the tribes of lovely and almost tame animals with which it was stocked, and ordered that greater care should be taken of them than ever.  Here was an opening for my plans of offence, and I made use of it with all the brute impetuosity I derived from my active mode of life.  I proposed the enterprize of poaching on his demesne to my few remaining comrades, who were the most determined and lawless of the crew; but they all shrunk from the peril; so I was left to achieve my revenge myself.  At first my exploits were unperceived; I increased in daring; footsteps on the dewy grass, torn boughs, and marks of slaughter, at length betrayed me to the game-keepers.  They kept better watch; I was taken, and sent to prison.  I entered its gloomy walls in a fit of triumphant extasy:  “He feels me now,” I cried, “and shall, again and again!”—­I passed but one day in confinement; in the evening I was liberated, as I was told, by the order of the Earl himself.  This news precipitated me from my self-raised pinnacle of honour.  He despises me, I thought; but he shall learn that I despise him, and hold in equal contempt his punishments and his clemency.  On the second night after my release, I was again taken by the gamekeepers—­again imprisoned, and again released; and again, such was my pertinacity, did the fourth night find me in the