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 threaten him with an excruciating death if he hesitate to commit his daily crime? But ha! ha! I am even with them! [Mysteriously.] I get my crime over the first thing in the morning and then, ha! ha! for the rest of the day I do good—I do good—I do good! [Melodramatically.]Two days since, I stole a child and built an orphan asylum. Yesterday I robbed a bank and endowed a bishopric. To-day I carry off Rose Maybud and atone with a cathedral! This is what it is to be the sport and toy of a Picture Gallery! But I will be bitterly revenged upon them! I will give them all to the Nation, and nobody shall ever look upon their faces again!

Enter

Ax your honour's pardon, but—

Ha! observed! And by a mariner! What would you with me, fellow?

Your honour, I'm a poor man-o'-war's man, becalmed in the doldrums—

I don't know them.

And I make bold to ax your honour's advice. Does your honour know what it is to have a heart?

My honour knows what it is to have a complete apparatus for conducting the circulation of the blood through the veins and arteries of the human body.

Aye, but has your honour a heart that ups and looks you in the face, and gives you quarter-deck orders that it's life and death to disobey?

I have not a heart of that description, but I have a Picture Gallery that presumes to take that liberty.

Well, your honour, it's like this—Your honour had an elder brother—

It had.

Who should have inherited your title and with it, its cuss.

Aye, but he died. Oh, Ruthven!—

He didn't.

He did not?