Hazlet trembled, and muttered something about a dog. It happened that just before coming back from the senate-house, a large Newfoundland had run against him, and his excited imagination had mingled this most recent impression with the vagaries of a temporary madness.
“The dog, my dear fellow; why, there’s no dog here.”
Hazlet only cowered farther into the corner.
“Here, won’t you have some tea?” said Lillyston; “I’ll make it for you. Come and help me.”
He began to busy himself about setting the tea-things, and cutting the bread, while he occupied Hazlet in pouring out the water and attending to the kettle. Hazlet started violently every now and then, and looked with a terrified side-glance at Lillyston, as though apprehensive of some wrong.
At last Lillyston got him to sit down quietly, and gave him a cup of tea and some bread. He ate it in silence, except that every now and then he uttered a sort of wail, and looked up at Lillyston. The look didn’t seem to satisfy him, for, after a few minutes, he seized his knife, and said, “I shall cut off your whiskers.”
What put the grotesque fancy into his head, Lillyston did not know; probably some faint reminiscence of having been forced to shave after the trick which Bruce had played on him by painting his face with lamp-black and ochre.
Lillyston decidedly declined the proposition, and they both started up from their seats—Hazlet brandishing his knife with determined purpose, and looking at his companion with a strange savage glare under his spectacles.
After darting round the room once or twice to escape his attack, Lillyston managed with wonderful skill to clutch the wrist of Hazlet’s right hand, and, being very strong, he held him with the grasp of a vice, while with his left hand he forced the knife out of his clutch, and dropped it on the floor. He held him tight for a minute or two, although Hazlet struggled so fiercely that it was no easy task, and then quietly forced him into a chair, and spoke to him in a firm authoritative voice—
“No mischief, Hazlet; we shan’t allow it. Now listen to me: you must go to bed.”