“No, by Gemini! “—a favorite expletive of the Major's in urgent moments.
“Nor the Meer's daughter, either, I suppose?”
“The black! I think not. Not if she won the lawsuit, and was as rich as—she never will be.”
“I agree with you there, Major, though I know nothing of the case or its merits; but it is enough to hear that a beggared squire is on one side, and Leadenhall Street on the other, to predict the upshot, and, for my own part, I wonder they go on with it.”
“I'll tell you how it is,” said M'Cormick, closing one eye so as to impart a look of intense cunning to his face. “It's the same with law as at a fox-hunt: when you 're tired out beating a cover, and ready to go off home, one dog—very often the worst in the whole pack—will yelp out. You know well enough he's a bad hound, and never found in his life. What does that signify? When you 're wishing a thing, whatever flatters your hopes is all right,—is n't that true?—and away you dash after the yelper as if he was a good hound.”
“You have put the matter most convincingly before me.”
“How thirsty he is now!” thought the Major; and grinned maliciously at his reflection.
“And the upshot of all,” said Stapylton, like one summing up a case,—“the upshot of all is, that this old man is not satisfied with his ruin if it be not complete; he must see the last timbers of the wreck carried away ere he leaves the scene of his disaster. Strange, sad infatuation!”
“Ay,” muttered the Major, who really had but few sympathies with merely moral abstractions.
“Not what I should have done in a like case; nor you either, Major, eh?”