"We'll play the game over again, if you choose, Worthy Sir," the Chaplain answers quite quietly.
"Yes, and then you'll win seven shillings of me. You've sworn to bring me to beggary and ruin. I know you swore it when my mamma sent you abroad with me. Oh, why did I come to foreign parts with a wicked, guzzling, gambling, chambering Chaplain, that's in league with the very host and the drawers of this thieving inn against me—that burns me a guinea a night in wax candles, and has had a freehold farm out of me in Burgundy wine."
"I've have had but two glasses the entire evening," the Chaplain pleaded, in a voice truly that was meek; but I thought that, even at the distance I stood from him, I could see the colour rising in his cheek.
"Oh, you have, you have," went on Squire Bartholomew, who, if not half Mad, was certainly more than three parts Muzzy; "you've ruined me, Mr. Hodge, with your cards and your candles and your Burgundy, and Goodness only knows what else besides."
The Chaplain could stand it no longer; and rose in a Rage.
"I wish all the candles and the cards were down your throat," he cried; "nearly all the wine is there already. I wish they'd choke you. I wish they were all in the pit of your stomach, and turned to hot burning coals. What shall I do with you, you cadaverous little jackanapes? The Lout did well this morning—"(I was the Lout, by your leave) "to—to liken thee to one, for thou art more monkey than man. But for fear of staining my cassock, I'd—I'd—"
He advanced towards him with a vengeful air, clenching his fist, as well as I could see, as he approached. Surely there never was such a comical character as this Bartholomew Pinchin. 'Tis the bare truth, that, as the enraged parson came at him, this Gentleman of broad acres drops down again on his marrowbones, just as I had seen him on the sands in the morning; and lifting up his little skinny hands towards the ceiling, begins yelling and bawling out louder than ever.
"Spare my life! spare my life!" he cried, "Take my watch and trinkets. Take my Gold Medal of the Pearl of Brunswick Club. Take the diamond solitaire I wear in my great Steenkirk on Sundays. Go to my Bankers, and draw every penny I've got in the world. Turn me out a naked, naked Pauper; but oh, Mr. Hodge spare my life. I'm young. I've been a sinner. I want to give a hundred Pounds to Lady Wackerbarth's charity school. I want to do every body good. Take my gold, but spare my life. Oh, you tall young man in the corner there, come and help an English gentleman out of the hands of a murtherous Chaplain."
"Why, you craven cur, you," puts in the Chaplain, bending over him with half-poised fist, yet with a kind of half-amusement in his features, "don't you know that the Tall young Man, as you call him, is the poor English lad who saved your worthless little carcass from drowning this morning, and whom you offered to recompense with a Scurvy Groat."
"I'll give him forty pound, I will," blubbered Mr. Pinchin, still on his knees. "I'll give him fifty pound when my Midsummer rents come in, only let him rescue me from the jaws of the roaring lion. Oh, my Mamma! my mamma!"