urer, Sir Thomas, and, you know, they are often
made of ivory."

"Come, you intermeddling rascal, I must either tear you asunder or my
brain will burst; I will not have such a worthless life as yours on my
hands, however; you vermin, out with you; I might have borne anything
but your compassion, and even that too; but to blazon through a gaping
metropolis the infamy of my family--of all that was dear to me--to turn
the name of my child into a polluted word, which modest lips would feel
ashamed to utter; nor, lastly, can I forgive you the crime of making me
suffer this mad and unexampled agony."

Action now took the place of words, and had, indeed, come in as
an auxiliary for some time previous. He seized the unfortunate
Crackenfudge, and as, with red and dripping lips, he gave vent to the
furious eruptions of his fiery spirit, like a living Vesuvius--for we
know of no other comparison so appropriate--he kicked and cuffed the
wretched and unlucky intelligencer, until he fairly threw him out at the
hall-door, which he himself shut after him.

"Begone, villain!" he exclaimed; "and may you never die till you feel
the torments which you have kindled, like the flames of hell, within
me!"

On entering the room again, he found, however, that with a being even so
wretched and contemptible as Crackenfudge, there had departed a portion
of his strength. So long as he had an object on which to launch his
fury, he felt that he could still sustain the battle of his passions.
But now a heavy sense came over him, as if of something which he could
not understand or analyze. His heart sank, and he felt a nameless and
indescribable terror within him--a terror, he thought, quite distinct
from the conduct of his daughter, or of anything else he had heard. He
had, in fact, lost all perception of his individual misery, and a moral
gloom, black as night, seemed to cover and mingle with those fiery
tortures which were consuming him. An apprehension, also, of immediate
dissolution came over him--his memory grew gradually weaker and weaker,
until he felt himself no longer able to account for the scene which had
just taken place; and for a brief period, although he neither swooned
nor fainted, nor fell into a fit of any kind, he experienced a stupor
that amounted to a complete unconsciousness of being, if we except an
undying impression of some great evil which had befallen him, and
which lay, like a grim and insatiable monster, tearing up his