of horror and despair, as made the spectators
shudder to look upon him.

"Where was God," said he, addressing them, and his voice, naturally thin
and wiry, now became lmsky and hollow, "where was God, to suffer this?
to suffer the poor to be ruined, and the rich to be made poor? Was it
right for the Almighty to look on an' let the villain do it? No--no--no;
I say no!"

The group around him shuddered at the daring blasphemy to which his
monstrous passion had driven him. Many females, who were in tears,
lamenting audibly, started, and felt their grief suspended for a moment
by this revolting charge against the justice of Providence.

"What do you all stand for here," he proceeded, "like stocks an stones?
Why don't yees kneel with me, an' let us join in one curse; one, no, but
let us shower them down upon him in thousands--in millions; an' when we
can no longer spake them, let us think them. To the last hour of my life
my heart 'ill never be widout a curse for him; an' the last word afore
I go into the presence of God, 'll be a black, heavy blessin' from hell
against him an' his, sowl an' body, while a drop o' their bad blood's
upon the earth."

"Don't be blasphamin', honest man," said a bystander; "if you've lost
money, that's no rason why you should fly in the face o' God for P----'s
roguery. Devil a one o' myself cares if I join you in a volley against
the robbin' scoundril, but I'd not take all the money the rip of hell
ran away wid, an' spake of God as you do."

"Oh, Saver!" exclaimed Fardorougha, who probably heard not a word he
said; "I knew--I knew--I always felt it was before me--a dog's death
behind a ditch--my tongue out wid starvation and hunger, and it was he
brought me to it!"

He had already knelt, and was uncovered, his whitish hair tossed by
the breeze in confusion about a face on which was painted the fearful
workings of that giant spirit, under whose tremendous grasp he writhed
and suffered like a serpent in the talons of a vulture. In this
position, with uplifted and trembling arms, his face raised towards
heaven, and his whole figure shrunk firmly together by the intense
malignity with which he was about to hiss out his venomous imprecations
against the defaulter, he presented at least one instance in which the
low, sordid vice of avarice rose to something like wild grandeur, if not
sublimity.

Having remained in this posture for some time, he clasped his withered
hands together and wrung them