“Upon the right and authority of my lease, Sir Thomas,” replied Trailcudgel; “and with great respect, sir, you had neither right nor authority for settin' my bog, that I'm payin' you rent for, to another tenant.”
The baronet grew black in the face, as he always did when in a passion, and especially when replied to.
“You are a lying scoundrel, sirra,” continued the other; “the bog does not belong to you, and I will set it to the devil if I like.”
“I know nobody so fit to be your tenant,” replied Trailcudgel. “But I am no scoundrel, Sir Thomas,” added the independent fellow, “and there's very few dare tell me so but yourself.”
“What, you villain! do you contradict me? do you bandy words and looks with me?” asked the baronet, his rage deepening at Trailcudgel's audacity in having replied at all.
“Villain!” returned his gigantic tenant, in a voice of thunder. “You called me a scoundrel, sirra, and you have called me a villain, sirra, now I tell you to your teeth, you're a liar—I am neither villain nor scoundrel; but you're both; and if I hear another word of insolence out of your foul and lying mouth, I'll thrash you as I would a shafe of whate or oats.”
The black hue of the baronet's rage changed to a much modester tint; he looked upon the face of the sturdy yeoman, now flushed with honest resentment; he looked upon the eye that was kindled at once into an expression of resolution and disdain; and turning on his toe, proceeded at a pace by no means funereal to the steps of the hall-door, and having ascended them, he turned round and said, in a very mild and quite a gentlemanly tone,
“Oh, very well, Mr. Trailcudgel; very well, indeed. I have a memory, Mr. Trailcudgel—I have a memory. Good morning!”
“Betther for you to have a heart,” replied Trailcudgel; “what you never had.”
Having uttered these words he departed, conscious at the same time, from his knowledge of his landlord's unrelenting malignity, that his own fate was sealed, and his ruin accomplished. And he was right. In the course of four years after their quarrel, Trailcudgel found himself, and his numerous family, in the scene of destitution to which we are about to conduct the indulgent reader.