as for that scoundrel," he would say, clenching his
fist, "if ever I can punish him I will. I shouldn't have the soul of
a dog, if ever I forgot the wrongs that have been done me by that
vagabond. Forgiveness? Pshaw! Are you dangling to sermons, Pen, at your
wife's leading-strings? Are you preaching that cant? There are some
injuries that no honest man should forgive, and I shall be a rogue on
the day I shake hands with that villain."

"Clive has adopted the Iroquois ethics," says George Warrington, smoking
his pipe sententiously, "rather than those which are at present received
among us. I am not sure that something is not to be said, as against
the Eastern, upon the Western, or Tomahawk, or Ojibbeway side of the
question. I should not like," he added, "to be in a vendetta or feud,
and to have you, Clive, and the old Colonel engaged against me."

"I would rather," I said, "for my part, have half a dozen such enemies
as Clive and the Colonel, than one like Barnes. You never know where or
when that villain may hit you." And before a very short period was over,
Sir Barnes Newcome, Bart., hit his two hostile kinsmen such a blow, as
one might expect from such a quarter.

CHAPTER LXIII. Mrs. Clive at Home

Clive and his father did not think fit to conceal their opinions
regarding their kinsman, Barnes Newcome, and uttered them in many public
places when Sir Barnes's conduct was brought into question, we may be
sure that their talk came to the Baronet's ears, and did not improve his
already angry feeling towards those gentlemen. For a while they had the
best of the attack. The Colonel routed Barnes out of his accustomed club
at Bays's; where also the gallant Sir George Tufto expressed himself
pretty openly with respect to the poor Baronet's want of courage: the
Colonel had bullied and browbeaten Barnes in the parlour of his own
bank, and the story was naturally well known in the City; where it
certainly was not pleasant for Sir Barnes, as he walked to 'Change, to
meet sometimes the scowls of the angry man of war, his uncle, striding
down to the offices of the Bundelcund Bank, and armed with that terrible
bamboo cane.

But though his wife had undeniably run away after notorious
ill-treatment from her husband; though he had shown two white feathers
in those unpleasant little affairs with his uncle and cousin; though Sir
Barnes Newcome was certainly neither amiable nor popular in the City
of London, his reputation