“Beautiful! Humph?” and Bones rubbed his hands, pleased with promised sport.
“Nevertheless, Colonel, let us proceed regularly, respectably. I have turned the matter over; and I think our best line of action is this.—Is this,” and Thrush gathering himself to the table, brought his forefinger to his nose, to steady his opinion. “We will call upon the rector of the demon’s parish.”
“Humph?” said Bones, doubtingly. “Well, if you think so.”
“We will inform him of the existence of the fiend your bullet has discovered”—Thrush paused.
“Very good,” cried Bones, encouragingly. “Very proper—if you think so.”
“The rector will then lay the matter before the bishop of his diocese”—Thrush again paused—
“Excellent; quite according to discipline,” said Bones, “and what then? Humph? What then?”
“Why, then,” continued Thrush, with an awful expression of face, “why then, the bishop—I have no doubt of it, whatever—the bishop will, with his pastoral grasp, seize upon Jericho, and haul him into the ecclesiastical court.”
The fierce, grim, cannibal look of the Colonel was softened into compassion. “Poor devil!” said Bones.
“There is no help for it,” cried Thrush, with the air of a man determined upon making a sacrifice in no way distressing to himself. “No help for it. Perhaps, it is not agreeable to be mixed up with such a matter. It is certainly not pleasant to go down to posterity in company with a demon. Nevertheless, we owe a debt to society; therefore, we will first obtain the attestation of Doctor Dodo, and so assured, proceed to Doctor Cummin of St. Shekels. Man owes two solemn debts; one to society, and one to nature. It is only when he pays the second, that he covers the first.”