“No,” said he; “I have something to speak of yet. I have come to another determination. In my mind, villain! there has been seventeen years of rebellion against your wrong; and I have sworn, and have kept my oath till now, that you should never compel me to give up my rights, in virtue of my wife, to you. But time has outworn the iron of my soul: and seventeen years of this endurance cannot be set against all the wealth of the world. What is it to me? To dig the earth, and live on roots; but to be free with it; to go and come as I list; to be at liberty, body and limb! This would be paradise compared with the best palace that ever Mammon built in hell. Now, take these straps from off me, and set me free. Time is favourable. Take me into your house peaceably and quietly, and I will make over to you all I have, as a free gift. What you have stolen, you shall keep. Land, houses, gold, everything; I will not retain of them a grain of sand, a stone, or a sparkle of metal. But let me out! Let me see this prison behind me!”
“It would be the act of a lunatic, and of no effect,” replied the doctor.
“How lunatic? To give that which is of no use to me for that which is dearer than life? Besides, I am sane—sound of mind.”
“No,” interrupted the doctor, “you are wrong on one question. Your disease consists in this very thing. You fancy I keep you confined in order to hold your property myself.”
“Fancy you do!” savagely exclaimed Woodruff, stamping the ground with rage; “this contradiction is enough to drive me mad. I know it! You know it. There is no fancy in the case. It is an excuse, a vile pretence, a lie of seventeen years' standing. It was a lie at first. Will you set me free?”
“It cannot be,” said the doctor; “go to your room.”
“It shall be!” replied Woodruff; “I will not go.”
“Then I must call assistance,” observed Rowel, as he attempted to approach the door at which he had entered.
“You shall not!” replied the patient, placing himself in front of the doctor, as though resolutely bent on preventing his approach to the door, although he had not the least use of his arms, which might have enabled him to effect his purpose.
“Stand aside, fool!” Rowel exclaimed, as he threw out his right arm in order to strike off the intruder. But Woodruff anticipated him; and, by a sudden and dexterous thrust of his foot in a horizontal line, knocked the doctor's legs from under him, and set him sprawling on the ground. Woodruff fell upon him instantly, in order to keep him down, and to stifle the loud cries of “Robson! Robson!” which were now issuing in rapid succession from the doctor's larynx. At the same time a tremendous struggle, rendered still more desperate by the doctor's fears, took place on the ground; during which the unhappy Woodruff strove so violently to disengage his hands from the ligatures of the waistcoat which bound him, that the blood gushed copiously from his mouth and nostrils. His efforts were not altogether unavailing. He partly disengaged one hand; and, with a degree of activity and energy only to be accounted for from the almost superhuman spirit which burned within him, and for which his antagonist, with all his advantages, was by no means an equal match, he succeeded in planting his forefinger and thumb, like the bite of a crocodile upon the doctor's throat.