tension of his sinews, as if it had resented his first
violence by a dogged defiance of his wishes, and spluttering a curse
between his teeth, he dashed it to again--and again, as once more it
sprang open from the shock.

'Who's master _now_?' snarled Mr. Paul Dangerfield, through his clenched
teeth, and smiting the senseless iron with a vindictive swoop of his
cane. I fancy his face at this moment had some of the peculiar lines and
corrugations which we observe in that of Retzsch's Mephistopheles, when
he gripes the arm of Faust to drag him from Margaret's cell. So he stood
behind his iron grating, glaring and grinning defiance into the
darkness, with his fingers clenched hard upon his cane.

Black Dillon's failure was a blow to the progress of his plans. It
incensed him. 'That d----d outcast! That _he_ should presume so to treat
a man who could master him so easily at any game, and buy and sell him
body and soul, and had actually bargained to give him five hundred
guineas--the needy, swinish miscreant! and paid him earnest beside--the
stupid cheat! Drink--dice--women! Why, five hundred guineas made him
free of his filthy paradise for a twelvemonth, and the leprous oaf could
not quit his impurities for an hour, and keep the appointment that was
to have made him master of his heart's desires.'

At his hall-door he paused, listening intently, with his spectacles
glimmering toward Chapelizod, for the sound of a distant step; but there
was no messenger afoot. He heard only the chill sigh of the air through
the leafless branches.

Mr. Dangerfield had not his key with him; and he beat an unnecessarily
loud and long tattoo upon his door, and before it could possibly have
been answered, he thundered a second through the passages.

Mrs. Jukes knew the meaning of that harsh and rabid summons. 'There was
something on the master's mind.' His anxieties never depressed him as
they did other men, but strung up his energies to a point of mental
tension and exasperation which made him terrible to his domestics. It
was not his acts--his conduct was always under control, but chiefly his
looks, and accents, and an influence that seemed to take possession of
him at such times that rendered him undefinably formidable to his
servants.

'Ha!--mighty obleeging (he so pronounced the word)--let in at last--cold
outside, Ma'am. You've let out the fire I suppose?'

His tones were like the bark of a wolf, and there was a devilish smirk
in h