“Confound it!” exclaimed Jerry, rising and striding towards the door of the room alluded to, “how is this? Foul play, my lads? By G! if there is—” and, before the sentence was finished, he had walked in and closed the door behind him. At that moment a faint shriek of surprise was heard within, and a cry of—“Oh, father, father!”
The reader will perhaps readily see through the secret of all this without my assistance. It may, nevertheless, not be without its use, if, by way of summing up, I briefly state, that during the time the mother of our hero was placed, as had been hinted in the previous conversation, in a shop in the great manufacturing town of Leeds, her appearance had attracted the attention of Mr. Lupton, when on his visits there in his magisterial capacity, and that he had ingeniously contrived, with the aid, counsel, and assistance of the complying Mr. Longstaff, to entice her thence by the offer of a far better situation, in the capacity of governess to the steward's children, than that of which she was already in the enjoyment. When the consequences of the fatal error into which she had been led became evident to herself, she instantly quitted Mr. Longstaff's house; and, by the consent of Mr. Lupton, retired to a cottage in the village. Here she maintained herself during some months by the small profits of needlework, sent to her regularly from the hall; and, in the vain hope of keeping secure the secret of her own bosom, she had purposely forborne to acquaint any one of her friends of the cause of the change which had taken place, or even of the change itself.
So far as the events of the night I am describing were concerned, although Mrs. Mallory was perfectly well acquainted with all the circumstances of the case, and also with the fact that the leading man of the night-company who assembled during the season at her house was Miss Clink's father, she had sufficient reasons, in the wish to keep that unfortunate young woman's secret, to prevent her from discovering to him any portion of her knowledge. The same feeling had caused her also to conceal the fact from both father and daughter that accident,—or misfortune rather,—had now brought them together under the same roof.
After some time had elapsed, during which we may imagine the old man was made fully acquainted with the situation in which his daughter was placed, he re-entered the room where his companions were assembled.
“Lads!” said he, striking the table violently with his fist, while his lips quivered as with an ague, and his eyes rolled with an expression of unusual ferocity, “if I live to go to the gallows for it, old as I am, I 'll cool the blood of that man up at yonder hall for what he 's done to me and mine! To go in there, and see that wench a mother before she is a wife,—her character gone for ever,—ruined,—lost!—why, I say, sink me to perdition this instant! if I don't redden his own hearthstone with his own blood, though I wait for it to the last day of my life. As sure as he sees the day, I'll make his children fatherless—I'll have my knife in him!”
“Stop! stop! Mr. Clink!” cried Mrs. Mallory, laying her hand upon his shoulder, “do cool yourself, and do not threaten so terribly.”
“Threaten!” he exclaimed; “I say you are as bad as them; and it is high time somebody not only threatened, but did it.—What! isn't it enough that I am ruined as a tradesman for ever, and compelled to this beggarly night-work, in defiance of the laws, for the sake of a paltry existence, not worth holding from one day to another? Isn't this, I say, enough, but must our children be ruined, and shall we be degraded still lower besides? What!—we are poor, are we?—and it does not matter because a child is poor what becomes of her! Well, well, it may do for some of you,—it may mix with your dastardly spirits very well; but I am of a different metal, lads. I never passed by an injury unrevenged yet; and my memory has not yet got so bad as to let that man slip through it. There's some men I should never forgive, if I lived a thousand years, and some that I would lay my own life down to do five minutes' justice on; but, above them, there is one shall never slip me, though I go the world over after him!”
“Surrender! at the peril of your lives!” exclaimed a bluff coarse voice behind them, while, to the almost speechless astonishment and dismay of the company, the speaker advanced from a back doorway, discovering the person of a giant-looking fellow, considerably above six feet in height, clothed in a thick dress for the night air, armed with a long pistol in each hand, and guarded by a ferocious mastiff at his side.
“Down with the lights, and defend yourselves, lads!” cried Jerry: “we are betrayed!”
Almost before these words had passed his lips, half a dozen shots whizzed at the intruder, several of which lodged in Mrs. Mallory's bacon and hams, that hung from the ceiling of the room. One of the men on the far side of the table fell from the second shot of the head keeper of Kiddal, for he it was; while the dog he had brought with him attacked with the ferocity of a tiger old Jerry himself, who by this time had drawn a knife nearly nine inches long from his pocket, and stood prepared in the middle of the room for the reception of his four-footed antagonist. Meanwhile, five or six other keepers rushed into the room to aid their leader. Filled with smoke, as the place was, from the discharge of fire-arms, it became almost impossible to distinguish friends from foes. The lights were extinguished, the fire threw out only a dull red light upon the objects immediately contiguous to it, and the momentary glare of discharged guns and pistols alone enabled each party to distinguish, as by a lightning flash, the objects of their mutual enmity. At the same time the fierce howling of, the dog, mingled with the terrific and thick-coming curses of old Jerry, as those two combatants rolled together upon the floor in fearful contention for the mastery, together with the shrieks of the two women on the stairs, made up a chorus too dismal almost for the region of purgatory itself.