Page:What will he do with it.djvu/673

Rh him contemptuously; with increasing contempt in his hard, fierce sneer, noted the lowering frowns on either side the Pandemonium; and it was only with an angry flash from his eyes that he marked, on closing his survey, the bar dropped across the door, and two forms, knife in hand, stationed at the threshold.

"Aha! my jolly companions," said he, then, "you do right to bar the door. Prudent families can't settle their quarrels too snugly among themselves. I am come here on purpose to give you all a proper scolding; and if some of you don't hang your heads for shame before I have done, youll die more game than I think for, whenever you come to the last Drop!"

He rose as he thus spoke, folding his sinewy arms across his wide chest. Most of the men had risen too—some, however, remained seated. There might be eighteen or twenty men in all. Every eye was fixed on him, and many a hand was on a deadly weapon.

"Scum of the earth!" burst forth Jasper, with voice like a roll of thunder, "I stooped to come among you—I shared among you my money. Was any one of you too poor to pay up his club fee—to buy a draught of Forgetfulness—I said, 'Brother, take!' Did brawl break out in your jollities—were knives drawn—a throat in danger—this right hand struck down the uproar, crushed back the coward murder. If I did not join in your rogueries, it was because they were sneaking and pitiful. I came as your Patron, not as your Pal; I did not meddle with your secrets—did not touch your plunder. I owed you nothing. Offal that you are! to me you owed drink, and meat, and goodfellowship. I gave you mirth, and I gave you Law; and in return ye laid a plot among you to get rid of me—how, ye white-livered scoundrels? Oho! not by those fists, and knives, and bludgeons. All your pigeon breasts clubbed together had not manhood for that. But to palm off upon me some dastardly deed of your own, by snares and scraps of false evidence—false oaths, too, no doubt—to smuggle me off to the hangman. That was your precious contrivance. Once again I am here; but this once only. What for?—why, to laugh at, and spit at, and spurn you. And if one man among you has in him an ounce of man's blood, let him show me the traitors who planned the pitiful project, and be they a dozen, they shall carry the mark of this hand till their carcasses go to the surgeon's scalpel."

He ceased. Though each was now hustling the other toward him, and the whole pack of miscreants was closing up, like