Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/101

 "Mr. Coward," says I, "I think you will, and readily, when you reflect that certain death awaits you, should you spurn my offices."

"I think not," says he, with a stoutness that astonished me.

"You think not!" cries I, "why, what in wonder's name hath brought you back to the very spot you started from, if 'tis not to beseech my farther aid?"

"Madam," he said, "had you refrained from my defamation I would not have told you this. But I will, to clear my name, for I could not bear to walk the scaffold with such a stigma on it."

"Bravo!" says I; "boy, you use the grand manner like an orator. What was the school in which you learnt your rhetoric?"

"'Tis the very one in which you learnt your gentleness," says he.

Being at a loss to answer him I made haste to turn the theme by warning him of his foes' approach and his great danger.

"The sooner they are come," he said, "the better I'll be suited. But if you must know why I am here to-night, 'tis you that brought me, madam."

I put my finger up and said: "Pray be careful, Mr. Coward, or I shall not believe you."

"When my enemies four times foiled me," he said, "in my attempts to make the north, and feeling that I had neither friends nor money in the south, that there every man would be my enemy, I