been thus kicked
out,--kicked out as far as words could kick him, and threatened with
personal violence should those words not be obeyed, he found himself
unable to go back to the lawyer's letter. "I should like to see any
one of your men dare to touch me," said he.

"You shall see it very soon if you don't take yourself off," said
Tappitt. Luckily the men were gone to breakfast, and opportunity for
violence was wanting.

Luke looked round, and then remembered that he and Tappitt were
probably alone in the place. "Mr. Tappitt," said he, "you're a very
foolish man."

"I dare say," said Tappitt; "very foolish not to give up my own
bread, and my wife's and children's bread, to an adventurer like
you."

"I have endeavoured to treat you with kindness and also with honesty,
and because you differ from me, as of course you have a right to do,
you think it best to insult me with all the Billingsgate you can
muster."

"If you don't go out of my counting-house, young man, I'll see if I
can't put you out myself;" and Tappitt, in spite of his fifty-five
years, absolutely put his hand down upon the poker.

There is no personal encounter in which a young man is so sure to
come by the worst as in that with a much older man. This is so surely
the case that it ought to be considered cowardly in an old man to
attack a young one. If an old man hit a young man over the head with
a walking-stick, what can the young man do, except run away to avoid
a second blow? Then the old man, if he be a wicked old man, as so
many are, tells all his friends that he has licked the young man.
Tappitt would certainly have acted in this way if the weapon in his
hand had been a stick instead of a poker. But Tappitt, when he saw
his own poker in his own hand, was afraid of it. If a woman attack a
man with a knife, the man will be held to have fought fairly, though
he shall have knocked her down in the encounter. And so also with an
old man, if he take a poker instead of a stick, the world will refuse
to him the advantage of his gray hairs. Some such an idea as this
came upon Tappitt--by instinct, and thus, though he still held the
poker, he refrained his hand.

"The man must be mad this morning," said Rowan, standing firmly
before him, with his two hands fixed upon his hips.

"Am I to send for the police?" said Tappitt.

"For a mad-doctor, I should think," said Rowan. Then Tappitt turned
round and rang a bell very violently. But as the bell was in