letter, which he delivered
to Madge at the door. She turned it over and examined it more carefully
than she generally did the old man's letters, for it was directed in a
clerk-like hand, and was sealed with a big and important-looking seal,
and when she came to examine this seal, she saw that it bore the words
"B. and F. Bank." "So, they are at it again, are they?" she said. "The
deuce take 'em, I say: though for that matter I can't exactly blame the
folks for looking after their own. Well, there's no mistake about one
thing, he must see this letter, else some of 'em will be coming over
and blowing the whole thing. He will ask me to read it for him, and
I'll do so, right an end. Lord, what a breeze there'll be! I hope I
shall be able to pull my lad through, though it very much depends on
the old 'uns temper. However, I shall soon know."

Old Hawker was nearly blind, and, although an avaricious, suspicious
old man, as a general rule, trusted implicitly on ordinary occasions to
George and Madge in the management of his accounts, reflecting, with
some reason, that it could not be their interest to cheat him. Of late,
however, he had been uneasy in his mind. Madge, there was no denying,
had got through a great deal more money than usual, and he was not
satisfied with her account of where it had gone. She, we know, was in
the habit of supplying George's extravagances in a way which tried all
her ingenuity to hide from him, and he, mistrusting her statements, had
determined as far as he could to watch her.

On this occasion she laid the letter on the breakfast table, and waited
his coming down, hoping that he might be in a good humour, so that
there might be some chance of averting the storm from George. Madge was
much terrified for the consequences, but was quite calm and firm.

Not long before she heard his heavy step coming down the stairs, and
soon he came into the room, evidently in no favourable state of mind.

"If you don't kill or poison that black tom-cat," was his first speech,
"by the Lord I will. I suppose you keep him for some of your witchwork.
But, if he's the devil himself, as I believe he is, I'll shoot him. I
won't be kept out of my natural sleep by such a devil's brat as that.
He's been keeping up such a growling and a scrowling on the hen-house
roof all night, that I thought it was Old Scratch come for you, and
getting impatient. If you must keep an imp of Satan in the house, get a
mole, or a rat, or s