But he tried to hold his head up, and he bust out the first thing about takin’ the law to me!
“You take the law to me! you!”
And oh! how my simeter of Truth and Jestice jest flashed round that man’s short, meachin’ figger.
“You take the law on anybody, you mean creeter you! who have brung all this sin and misery to pass for your own selfishness. You, who took the good-tempered, weak boy and poured your poison down his throat till you flooded out all his moral sense and husbandly and fatherly affection, and filled up the empty space with the demons of Hatred and Brutality and crazy quarrelin’s!
“You talk of law, who stole away every mite of that poor girl’s happiness and every cent of her money for your cursed drink!
“You, who drove out of their home the sweet angel of Happiness, who used to board with ’em stiddy, and drove in your beasts of prey!
“You ruined her happiness, you starved her, you broke her heart, and now you want her back to torment her agin!
“Wall, you won’t have her, unless you take her over my prostrate form!”
The B. I. L. wuz half skairt to death, and he stood demute.
But Ellick broke in with tremblin’ lips. He stopped talkin’ about Annie for a spell, bein’, I spoze, perfectly overcome by my eloquence. And he begun on another tack, and sez he in tremblin’ axents—