The Smith at Learmont House.—The Breakfast.—The Threat, and its Results.—The Caution.
While these events were taking place, Learmont was ill at ease in his stately halls. Well he knew that the visitation of the smith at so inopportune an hour at his fête would be related throughout that circle of nobility and power into which it was the grand end and aim of his life to force himself; and, it added one more damning argument to those already rapidly accumulating in his mind towards the conviction, that after all he had made a grand mistake in life, and mistaken the road to happiness. At the same time, however, he felt that having chosen the path of guilt he had, there was for him no retreat, and with a dogged perseverance, compounded of mortified ambition, he continued his career of guilt.
Take the life of Britton he dared not, although he lay such an inanimate, helpless mass in his power, and it was not the least of Learmont’s annoyances that he was compelled to see to the personal safety of the drunken brute who had produced confusion and derangement among his most ambitious schemes.
It was many hours before Britton slept off the intoxication under the influence of which he had acted in the manner described in the ball-room, and when he did recover, and open his heavy eyes, it was with no small degree of surprise that he found himself in the same dark room into which the squire had thrown him to sleep off his debauch.
His first thought was that he was in prison, and he rose to his feet with bitter imprecations and awful curses upon the head of Learmont and Gray, whom he supposed must have betrayed him in some way. A second thought, however, dispelled this delusion.
“No—no; d—n them—no!” he cried. “They dare not! Well they know they dare not!—I have them safe!—My evidence would destroy them, while it would not place me in a worse position. Where the devil am I?”
The room was very dark, the only light coming from a small pane of glass at the top of the door. Britton, however, was not exactly the kind of person to waste much time in idle conjecture or imaginative theories as to where he was; but, ascertaining that the door was locked, he placed his shoulder against it and with one heave of his bulky form, forced it from its hinges.
A loud cry arrested the smith’s attention as he accomplished this feat, and, to his great amusement, he saw lying amid the confusion of a tray, glasses, and decanters, a man who happened to have been passing at the moment, and, alarmed at the sudden and violent appearance of the smith, had fallen down with what he was so carefully carrying.
This was a piece of sport quite in Britton’s way—one of those practical jests that he perfectly understood and appreciated, in order, however, to add zest to it, he gave the astonished man a hearty kick, which induced him to spring to his feet, and make off with frantic speed, shouting “Murder! Murder!” at the top of his lungs.
Britton immediately turned his attention to one decanter which, in a most miraculous and extraordinary manner, preserved its position of perpendicularity amidst the universal wreck of every other article. He seized it instantly as a lawful prize, and plunging the neck of it into his capacious mouth, he withdrew it not again until it presented an appearance of perfect vacuity, and the bottle of wine which it had contained was transferred into his interior man.