ot, unassisted, support it with
impunity. You want help: I am he in whom you have dared to believe that
you could find it. You are detected; now be undeceived!"

"Is it so?" said Crauford; and as he saw that it was no longer possible
to feign, the poison of his heart broke forth in its full venom. The
fiend rose from the reptile, and stood exposed in its natural shape.
Returning Glendower's stern but lofty gaze with an eye to which all evil
passions lent their unholy fire, he repeated, "Is it so? then you are
more penetrating than I thought; but it is indifferent to me. It was for
your sake, not mine, most righteous man, that I wished you might have
a disguise to satisfy the modesty of your punctilios. It is all one to
Richard Crauford whether you go blindfold or with open eyes into his
snare. Go you must, and shall. Ay, frowns will not awe me. You have
desired the truth: you shall have it. You are right: I hate you,--hate
you with a soul whose force of hatred you cannot dream of. Your pride,
your stubbornness, your coldness of heart, which things that would stir
the blood of beggars cannot warm; your icy and passionless virtue,--I
hate, I hate all! You are right also, most wise inquisitor, in supposing
that in the scheme proposed to you, I am the principal: I am! You were
to be the tool, and shall. I have offered you mild inducements,--pleas
to soothe the technicalities of your conscience: you have rejected them;
be it so. Now choose between my first offer and the gibbet. Ay, the
gibbet! That night on which we made the appointment which shall not yet
be in vain,--on that night you stopped me in the street; you demanded
money; you robbed me; I will swear; I will prove it. Now, then, tremble,
man of morality: dupe of your own strength, you are in my power;
tremble! Yet in my safety is your escape: I am generous. I repeat my
original offer,--wealth, as great as you will demand, or--the gibbet,
the gibbet: do I speak loud enough? do you hear?"

"Poor fool!" said Glendower, laughing scornfully and moving away. But
when Crauford, partly in mockery, partly in menace, placed his hand upon
Glendower's shoulder, as if to stop him, the touch seemed to change his
mood from scorn to fury; turning abruptly round, he seized the
villain's throat with a giant's strength, and cried out, while his whole
countenance worked beneath the tempestuous wrath within, "What if I
squeeze out thy poisonous life from thee this moment!" and then once