"Lies! lies!" again shrieked the raucous voice of Luke, smothered by
terror; while oaths, shouts, imprecations, rang out in horrid tumult
from one end of the table to the other, till the lawyer's face, over
which a startling change was rapidly passing, drew the whole crowd
forward again in awful fascination, till they clung, speechless, arm in
arm, shoulder propping shoulder, while he gasped out in dismay equal to
their own these last fatal words:

"'That was at your board, my brothers; now you are at mine. You have
eaten my viands, drunk of my cup; and now, through the mouth of the one
man who has been true to me because therein lies his advantage, I offer
you a final glass. Will you drink it? I drank yours. By that old-time
oath which binds us to share each other's fortune, I ask you to share
this cup with me. _You will not?_'"

"No, no, no!" shouted one after another.

"'Then,'" the inexorable voice went on, a voice which to these miserable
souls was no longer that of the lawyer, but an issue from the grave they
had themselves dug for Anthony Westonhaugh, "'know that your abstinence
comes too late; that you have already drunk the toast destined to end
your lives. The bottle which you must have missed from that board of
yours has been offered you again. A label is easily changed, and--Luke,
John, Hector, I know you all so well--that bottle has been greedily
emptied by you; and while I, who sipped sparingly, lived three weeks,
you, who have drunk deep, _have not three hours before you, possibly not
three minutes_.'"

Oh, the wail of those lost souls as this last sentence issued
in a final pant of horror from the lawyer's quaking lips!
Shrieks--howls--prayers for mercy--groans deep enough to make the hair
rise--and curses, at sound of which I shut my ears in horror, only to
open them again in dread, as, with one simultaneous impulse, they flung
themselves upon the lawyer, who, foreseeing this rush, had backed up
against the wall.

He tried to stem the tide.

"I knew nothing of the poisoning," he protested. "That was not my reason
for declining to drink. I wished to preserve my senses--to carry out my
client's wishes. As God lives, I did not know he meant to carry his
revenge so far. Mercy! mer----"

But the hands which clutched him were the hands of murderers, and the
lawyer's puny figure could not stand up against the avalanche of human
terror, relentless fury, and mad vengeance which now rolled in upon it.
As