In the course of his musings and mournings, as he sat chattering with cold, a loosened paving-stone arrested his attention; and, with the instinct of genius, which catches comfort and assistance from means apparently the most trivial, and unpromising in their aspect, the paving-stone seemed to impart an idea to Montezuma Moggs, in this "his last and fearfulest extremity." Grappling this new weapon in both his hands, he raised it and poised it aloft.
"I shall make a ten-strike now," exclaimed he, as he launched the missile at the door with herculean force, and himself remained in classic attitude watching the effect of the shot, as the door groaned, and creaked, and splintered under the unwonted infliction. Still, however, it did not give way before this application of force, though the prospect was encouraging. The observers laughed—Moggs chuckled—the dogs barked louder than before; and indeed it seemed all round as if a new light had been cast upon the subject.
"Hongcore!" cried somebody.
"I will," said Moggs, preparing to demonstrate accordingly.
"Stop there," said the voice of Mrs. Montezuma Moggs, as she raised the window, "if you hongcore the door of this 'ere house again, I'll call the watch, to see what he thinks of such doings, I will. And now, once for all, you can't come in here to-night."
"Can't, indeed!—why can't I?—not come into my own house! Do you call this a free country, on the gineral average, if such rebellions are to be tolerated?"
"Your house, Mr. Moggs—yours?—who pays the rent, Moggs—who feeds you and the children, Moggs—who finds the fire and every thing else? Tell us that?"
This was somewhat of the nature of a home-thrust, and Moggs, rather conscience-stricken, was dumb-founded and appalled. Moggs was very cold, and therefore, for the time being, deficient in his usual pride and self-esteem, leaving himself more pervious to the assault of reproach from without and within, than he would have been in a more genial state of the atmosphere. No man is courageous when he is thoroughly chilled; and it had become painfully evident that this was not a momentary riot, but an enduring revolution, through the intermedium of a civil war.
"Ho, ho!" faintly responded Moggs, though once more preparing to carry the citadel by storm, "I'll settle this business in a twinkling."
Splash!