"Scoundrel!" repeated M'Guinness, overturning a small table, and all thereupon, with a crash upon the floor, and approaching the old gentleman, while his ugly face grew to a sickly, tallowy white with rage, "you go for to bring a whole lot of beggarly squatters into the house to make away with your substance, and to turn you against your faithful, tried, trusty, and dutiful servants," he continued, shaking his fist in his master's face. "You do, and to leave them, ten to one, in their old days unprovided for. Damn ingratitude!—to the devil with thankless, unnatural vermin! You call me scoundrel. Scoundrel was the word—by this cross it was."
While Oliver French, speechless with astonishment and rage, gazed upon the audacious menial, Mistress Martha herself entered the chamber.
"Yes, they are, you old dark-hearted hypocrite—they're settled here—fixed in the house—they are," screamed she; "but they sha'n't stay long; or, if they do, I'll not leave a whole bone in their skins. What did they ever do for you, you thankless wretch?"
"Ay, what did they ever do for you?" shouted M'Guinness.
"Do you think we're fools—do you? and idiots—do you? not to know what you're at, you ungrateful miscreant! Turn them out, bag and baggage—every mother's skin of them, or I'll show them the reason why, turn them out, I say."
"You infernal hag, I'd see you in hell or Bedlam first," shouted Oliver, transported with fury. "You have had your way too long, you accursed witch—you have."
"Never mind—oh!—you wretch," shrieked she—"never mind—wait a bit—and never fear, you old crippled sinner, I'll be revenged on you, you old devil's limb. Here's your watch for you," screamed she, snatching a massive, chased gold watch from her side, and hurling it at his head. It passed close by his ear, and struck the floor behind him, attesting the force with which it had been thrown, as well as the solidity of its workmanship, by a deep mark ploughed in the floor.
Oliver French grasped his crutch and raised it threateningly.
"You old wretch, I'll not let you strike the woman," cried M'Guinness, snatching the poker, and preparing to dash it at the old man's head. What might have been the issue of the strife it were hard to say, had not Mr. Audley at that moment entered the room.
"Heyday!" cried that gentleman, "I thought it had been robbers—what's all this?"