neck, you should not wring from me a farthing more!"

"Five thousand!" repeated Thornton; "a mere drop--a child's toy--why,
you are playing with me, Sir Reginald--nay, I am a reasonable man,
and will abate a trifle or so of my just claims, but you must not take
advantage of my good nature. Make me snug and easy for life--let me keep
a brace of hunters--a cosey box--a bit of land to it, and a girl after
my own heart, and I'll say quits with you. Now, Mr. Pelham, who is a
long-headed gentleman, and does not spit on his own blanket, knows well
enough that one can't do all this for five thousand pounds; make it a
thousand a year--that is, give me a cool twenty thousand--and I won't
exact another sous. Egad, this drinking makes one deuced thirsty--Mr.
Pelham, just reach me that glass of water--I hear bees in my head!"

Seeing that I did not stir, Thornton rose, with an oath against pride;
and swaggering towards the table, took up a tumbler of water, which
happened accidentally to be there: close by it was the picture of the
ill-fated Gertrude. The gambler, who was evidently so intoxicated as
to be scarcely conscious of his motions or words (otherwise, in all
probability, he would, to borrow from himself a proverb illustrative of
his profession, have played his cards better) took up the portrait.

Glanville saw the action, and was by his side in an instant. "Touch it
not with your accursed hands!" he cried, in an ungovernable fury. "Leave
your hold this instant, or I will dash you to pieces!"

Thornton kept a firm gripe of the picture. "Here's a to-do!" said he
tauntingly: "was there ever such work about a poor--(using a word too
coarse for repetition) before?"

The word had scarcely passed his lips, when he was stretched at his
full length upon the ground. Nor did Glanville stop there. With all
the strength of his nervous and Herculean frame, fully requited for the
debility of disease by the fury of the moment, he seized the gamester as
if he had been an infant, and dragged him to the door: the next moment I
heard his heavy frame rolling down the stairs with no decorous slowness
of descent.

Glanville re-appeared. "Good God!" I cried, "what have you done?" But he
was too lost in his still unappeased rage to heed me. He leaned, panting
and breathless, against the wall, with clenched teeth, and a flashing
eye, rendered more terribly bright by the feverish lustre natural to his
disease.

Presently I heard Thornton re-as