"What a flat you are," shouted he in a voice of thunder, "to think I'm a goin' to pay! Pay! I never pay—I'm Dando!"
The people in the other boxes crowded forward to see the celebrated stranger; the little boy grinned as he dropped two hundred and forty-four oyster-shells, and Mr. Grampus rushed madly into his front shop, shrieking for a watchman.
As he ran, he stumbled over something on the floor,—a woman and a glass of brandy and water lay there extended. Like Tarquinia reversed, Elijah Grampus was trampling over the lifeless body of Adeliza.
Why enlarge upon the miserable theme? The confiding girl, in returning with the grog from the Blue Lion, had arrived at the shop only in time to hear the fatal name of Dando. She saw him, tipsy and triumphant, bestriding the festal table, and yelling with horrid laughter! The truth flashed upon her—she fell!
Lost to worldly cares in contemplating the sorrows of their idolized child, her parents forgot all else beside. Mrs. G. held the vinegar-cruet to her nostrils; her husband brought the soda-water fountain to play upon her; it restored her to life, but not to sense. When Adeliza Grampus rose from that trance she was a MANIAC!
But what became of the deceiver? The gormandizing ruffian, the lying renegade, the fiend in human shape, escaped in the midst of this scene of desolation. He walked unconcerned through the shop, his hat cocked on one side as before, swaggering as before, whistling as before: far in the moonlight might you see his figure; long, long in the night-silence rang his demoniac melody of Jim Crow!
When Samuel the boy cleaned out the shop in the morning, and made the inventory of the goods, a silver fork, a plated ditto, a dish, and a pewter pot were found to be wanting. Ingenuity will not be long in guessing the name of the thief.
Gentles, my tale is told. If it may have deterred one soul from vice, my end is fully answered: if it may have taught to school-mistresses carefulness, to pupils circumspection, to youth the folly of sickly sentiment, the pain of bitter deception; to manhood the crime, the meanness of gluttony, the vice which it occasions, and the wicked passions it fosters; if these, or any of these, have been taught by the above tale, Goliah Gahagan seeks for no other reward.