sternly demanded an explanation,
he gave one in a loud, scolding voice.

"Grounds! you shall have them; and turn to the light that I may see your
brazen face blush black, when you hear yourself proved to be a liar and
a hypocrite. At a public meeting in the Town-hall yesterday, I had the
pleasure of hearing myself insulted by the speaker opposed to me in the
question under discussion, by allusions to my private affairs; by cant
about monsters without natural affection, family despots, and such
trash; and when I rose to answer, I was met by a shout from the filthy
mob, where the mention of your name enabled me at once to detect the
quarter in which this base attack had originated. When I looked round, I
saw that treacherous villain, Hunsden acting as fugleman. I detected you
in close conversation with Hunsden at my house a month ago, and I know
that you were at Hunsden's rooms last night. Deny it if you dare."

"Oh, I shall not deny it! And if Hunsden hounded on the people to hiss
you, he did quite right. You deserve popular execration; for a worse
man, a harder master, a more brutal brother than you are has seldom
existed."

"Sirrah! sirrah!" reiterated Crimsworth; and to complete his apostrophe,
he cracked the whip straight over my head.

A minute sufficed to wrest it from him, break it in two pieces, and
throw it under the grate. He made a headlong rush at me, which I evaded,
and said--

"Touch me, and I'll have you up before the nearest magistrate."

Men like Crimsworth, if firmly and calmly resisted, always abate
something of their exorbitant insolence; he had no mind to be brought
before a magistrate, and I suppose he saw I meant what I said. After
an odd and long stare at me, at once bull-like and amazed, he seemed
to bethink himself that, after all, his money gave him sufficient
superiority over a beggar like me, and that he had in his hands a surer
and more dignified mode of revenge than the somewhat hazardous one of
personal chastisement.

"Take your hat," said he. "Take what belongs to you, and go out at
that door; get away to your parish, you pauper: beg, steal, starve, get
transported, do what you like; but at your peril venture again into
my sight! If ever I hear of your setting foot on an inch of ground
belonging to me, I'll hire a man to cane you."

"It is not likely you'll have the chance; once off your premises, what
temptation can I have to return to them? I leave a prison, I leave a
tyrant;