Page:Paul Clifford Vol 3.djvu/223

Rh those children be not the outcasts of the earth—the accursed of man and God—the fit offspring of the thing you have made me. Wretch! I hurl back on you the denunciation with which, when we met three nights since, you would have crushed the victim of your own perfidy. You shall tread the path of your ambition childless, and objectless, and hopeless. Disease shall set her stamp upon your frame. The worm shall batten upon your heart. You shall have honours, and enjoy them not: you shall gain your ambition, and despair: you shall pine for your son, and find him not; or, if you find him, you shall curse the hour in which he was born. Mark me, man—I am dying while I speak—I know that I am a prophet in my curse. From this hour I am avenged, and you are my scorn!"

As the hardest natures sink appalled before the stony eye of the maniac, so, in the dead of the night, pinioned by ruffians, the wild and solemn voice (sharpened by passion and partial madness,) of the ghastly figure before him curdling through his veins, even the haughty and daring character of William Brandon quailed! He uttered not a