r forest full
of game, the allegiance of a thousand vassals. Wish you for favour in
courts, temporal or spiritual? The smiles of kings, the pardon of popes
and priests for old crimes, and the indulgence which encourages priest
ridden fools to venture on new ones--all these holy incentives to vice
may be purchased for gold. Revenge itself, which the gods are said to
reserve to themselves, doubtless because they envy humanity so sweet a
morsel--revenge itself is to be bought by it. But it is also to be won
by superior skill, and that is the nobler mode of reaching it. I will
spare, then, my treasure for other uses, and accomplish my revenge
gratis; or rather I will add the luxury of augmented wealth to the
triumph of requited wrongs."

Thus thought Dwining, as, returned from his visit to Sir John Ramorny,
he added the gold he had received for his various services to the mass
of his treasure; and, having gloated over the whole for a minute or two,
turned the key on his concealed treasure house, and walked forth on his
visits to his patients, yielding the wall to every man whom he met and
bowing and doffing his bonnet to the poorest burgher that owned a petty
booth, nay, to the artificers who gained their precarious bread by the
labour of their welked hands.

"Caitiffs," was the thought of his heart while he did such
obeisance--"base, sodden witted mechanics! did you know what this
key could disclose, what foul weather from heaven would prevent your
unbonneting? what putrid kennel in your wretched hamlet would be
disgusting enough to make you scruple to fall down and worship the owner
of such wealth? But I will make you feel my power, though it suits my
honour to hide the source of it. I will be an incubus to your city,
since you have rejected me as a magistrate. Like the night mare, I will
hag ride ye, yet remain invisible myself. This miserable Ramorny, too,
he who, in losing his hand, has, like a poor artisan, lost the only
valuable part of his frame, he heaps insulting language on me, as if
anything which he can say had power to chafe a constant mind like mine!
Yet, while he calls me rogue, villain, and slave, he acts as wisely as
if he should amuse himself by pulling hairs out of my head while my hand
had hold of his heart strings. Every insult I can pay back instantly
by a pang of bodily pain or mental agony, and--he, he!--I run no long
accounts with his knighthood, that must be allowed."

While the mediciner was t